COMPLAINTS about the council have soared in the last year – but there’s a reason for that.
Bracknell Forest Council’s (BFC) departments received 203 complaints in 2018/2019, up from 100 a year earlier.
READ MORE: Post office ram-raided
Thom Wilson, Assistant Director, Commissioning at BFC, said: “We have improved our complaints process over the last 18 months, streamlining the way we work across the People Directorate.
“As part of this, our complaints and compliments manager has been proactive in working with teams across the organisation to ensure complaints are correctly recorded, as well as developing an online form to make the complaints process more accessible.
“We have started to record complaints for the housing and benefits service at an earlier stage, and in 2018/19 this accounted for just over one in four of all of complaints.
“This combined approach has seen an increase in complaints which was not unexpected, and allows us to respond to residents’ concerns in a timely and professional way, as well as learning lessons to help us improve.”
READ MORE: Sainsbury's store will close
Most of were about the children’s social care team, which received 107 complaints.
‘Attitude of the worker’, communication and decisions were the most common reasons complaints were filed, with each category seeing more than 20 grievances.
Only eight people complained about the quality of the service from children’s social care.
However, the quality of the service was the top reason people complained about adult’s social care last year, with 13 doing so from 41 complaints in total.
The remaining 55 complaints were about housing issues, and ‘attitude of staff’, benefits and housing procedure caused the most problems.
More than half of all complaints were not investigated further, but more than a quarter were partially upheld.
READ MORE: Council care providers slammed for poor support
Five children’s social care complaints were investigated to a later stage in 2018/2019 at an average cost of £2,800 each.
Despite the increase in complaints, there was also an increase in compliments.
BFC received 169 in 2018/2019, compared to 154 the previous year.
One said: “Thank you very much for all the help, advice and support you have given us over the past few months, it has been invaluable.
“The service and level of care has been excellent.
“The carers have all been caring, respectful of Mum and all very professional, and always cheerful you are lucky to have such a great team.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here