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The Head of Legal Services presented a report on compliments, complaints, concerns and requests for information made by the public to the Service over the past 12 months.
Members were informed that there were slightly fewer complaints over the past 12 months compared to last year and were assured that officers were satisfied that there were no recurring themes or trends in the concerns and complaints to give any cause for concern.
Members noted that there continues to be a high volume of FOI requests, which takes up a considerable amount of staff time. Where possible the Service is putting as much information on the website as possible for the public. The Service was also looking at how they can also put a summary of incident reports on the website to be more proactive.
Members also noted that although there were only a small number of Subject Access Requests, these were also extremely time consuming.
Members were assured that all complaints are investigated by duty officers, draft responses are sent to Legal Services to be reviewed and all complainants can ask for a further review by the Assistant Chief Fire Officer or make a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman.
A Member requested further details on the poor response/service complaint and the Head of Legal Services would provide this information out of the meeting.
RESOLVED that the Committee notes that during the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022:
i) a total of 270 requests for information containing 830 queries about the Service were received. No requests were passed to the Information Commissioners Office for review.
ii) a total of 40 compliments were received from the public;
iii) 28 complaints about Service activities were made;
iv) 15 complaints or concerns were received about activities carried out by other organisations or individuals; and
v) One of the complainants appealed the response provided and none were passed to the Local Government Ombudsman for further investigation.