THE number of complaints made to Lichfield District Council have risen – with issues around waste being the most complained about.
However, revenues and benefits, corporate debt, housing, and planning and enforcement also had concerns raised by the public, a report has revealed.
The overview and scrutiny committee heard that between 1st April 2023 and 31st March 2024, 91 complaints were received compared to 70 in the previous year.
The number of apologies from the local authority issued also rose from 16 to 19.
The report revealed that not all complaints were recorded, with those where there has been a service failure which is easily rectified not registered unless they become repeat issues and the complainant asks for it to be formally logged.
Cllr Doug Pullen, leader of Lichfield District Council, said:
“Accountability and transparency are really key for us and this is one of the ways we demonstrate accountability and transparency when we get things wrong as we do occasionally as an organisation.
“The numbers in the report look as if the number of complaints is tracking upwards, but we think we’re just getting better at recording what we view as a complaint.
“The number of stage one complaints we upheld is not the same as the number of apologies we issued. Stage one complaints upheld are higher, so that’s obviously not right. Where we uphold a complaint we absolutely should be apologising and processes are being put in place to ensure that that’s done in a more sensible manner.”
Despite the number of MP enquiries falling to 97 from 116, councillors on the committee felt like the MPs should be making use of ward councillors in the first instance.
Labour opposition group leader Cllr Sue Woodward said:
“Having MP enquiries into this report sort of muddies the water it seems because I don’t need to know about the casework of an MP – I need to know if they are genuinely making a complaint or a compliment.
“It seems to me that if there are 97 MP enquiries this year then they are not using their local members effectively enough because councillors do their casework on a day-to-day basis.
“I would certainly encourage the new MP for Lichfield and the re-elected MP for Tamworth to work with the local councillors so they are not having to pass on enquiries about ‘can you clear this fly-tipping’ or ‘can you empty these litter bins’ because that just seems to be a waste of time for Members of Parliament.”
I recall LDC was up for an award of some sort as a good well run Council. Guess that went out the window! Certainly hope so
Looks like the serious mistakes have stabalised at about a hundred a year (not counting the planning department of course). I think the leader of the council should be addressing this. In business this would be unacceptable. That said the council is very tolerant of its own shortfalls.
It should also be noted that compliments more than doubled with Planning being the most complimented service for the second year running with complaints dropping from14% to 9% of all complaints received.
Readers can see how the County Council did in their report to Corporate Service Scrutiny on the 10th of September.
MPs like the prominence of corresponding on behalf of constituents, but their time and effectiveness would benefit from actually being aware of the District Council facilities, and dare I say actually ask the constituent “Have you actually utilised the Council’s Reporting facilities”, which I find very straightforward to use AND usually very effective in achieving the task requested.
The items mentioned, i.e. litter bin emptying is very regularly done and 100% effective in our locality, and Fly tip removal, when requested has been known to be done in less than 24 hours.