A councillor's workbook on handling complaints for service improvement

This workbook has been designed as a learning aid for elected councillors. It considers the key skills, approaches and strategies that make for an effective ward councillor in relation to complaints handling and councillors’ oversight role.

The workbook can be used as a standalone learning aid or as an adjunct to other resources you may encounter. It offers few firm rules for councillors as it is recognised that everyone must decide how best to use and develop their  skills, based on individual preference. As such, the workbook should serve more as a direction marker rather than a roadmap to help you consider how best to deal with complaints from local residents or organisations.

This workbook is part of a series of resources offered by the LGA to help you in your role. Other helpful resources which link to this topic are our workbooks on influencing skills, performance management and supporting your constituents with complex issues. 

This workbook will: 

• take you through the complaints process and your role in it
• provide an overview of ombudsman services and what types of complaints they deal with
• direct you to sources of information for monitoring complaints
• explain your oversight role and how to use complaints to drive service improvement
• signpost you to sources of information for complaints that are outside your council’s remit. 

Throughout this workbook you will encounter different types of information, and suggested actions, indicated by the symbols shown below:

Guidance

– this icon indicates guidance such as definitions, quotations and research
 

Challenges

– this icon indicates questions asking you to reflect on your role or approach
 

Case studies

– this icon indicates examples of approaches used in different settings
 

Hints and tips

– this icon indicates best practice advice
 

Useful links

– this icon indicates sources of additional information

Councils provide services and make decisions which affect the lives of local residents.

It is inevitable that sometimes people will feel that a council has made a wrong decision, or has not fulfilled its duty in the services it provides. In some cases, the local authority may have made a mistake, or need to make improvements to its services or the way it goes about providing them.

When an individual has concerns, it is important that they feel they can raise these with the council and that their complaint will be treated with respect and responded to accordingly. It is also important that if a mistake has been made, the council has the opportunity to rectify it and take measures to ensure that it does not happen again.Part of your role as a councillor is to support your residents by directing them to the appropriate complaints channels and resources and providing representation where appropriate. To do this effectively, you must be familiar with the services your council provides, its complaints processes and where to signpost people if their complaint is not about a service provided by the council.

It is important that councils have processes in place to consider which complaints can be responded to as early as possible, and which require further consideration. Councils need to consider factors such as the complexity of the complaint and whether the individual is vulnerable or at risk.  This requires councils to embrace complaints through increased transparency, accessibility, and complaint handling governance, which demonstrate that local residents and organisations are at the heart of its service delivery. 

Some councils have a duty to deal with certain complaints under statutory processes. This includes complaints about adult social care, children’s services and public health. 

Councillors also have a role in holding their council to account, improving services and optimising outcomes for their residents. Data about complaints provides you with an important source of intelligence about what is going on in your ward, which you can use as a means of seeking service improvement. 

As a councillor, you will receive a range of complaints, from local residents and organisations. To be able to handle the complaints effectively you need to equip yourself with information that will help you to decide what the next steps should be.

You need to know:

• your council's responsibilities
• your council's structure
• your council's complaints procedures
• what to do with complaints you receive
• what happens when a complaint is not resolved.

As a councillor, you have a responsibility to act on any issues you identify with the services provided by your council and should use the information available to you to determine what questions you need to be asking to scrutinise your council’s services and the way they are provided. 

You should recognise that complaints about council services provided by other organisations should normally be treated as if they were complaints about the council.  

You can help to facilitate change by: 

• raising concerns when you spot them
• making other people, such as the complaints team, other councillors and committees aware of your concerns
• participating on committees so that you can actively influence improvement.

Your council's responsibilities 

You should know what services your council does and does not provide so that you can decide whether the complaint is one that your council needs to handle.

Guidance – What types of authorities have responsibilities over the following topics?

Education

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council

Environmental health

• unitary authority
• district council
• metropolitan borough council 

Highways

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Housing

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Leisure

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Libraries

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Local tax collection

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Passenger transport

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Planning applications

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Social care

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Strategic planning

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council
• district council 

Trading standards

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Transport planning

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Waste collection

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Waste disposal

• unitary authority
• county council
• metropolitan borough council 

Councillor hub, LGA

Your council's structure

Be aware of how the council is governed, who is responsible for what how decisions are made and how decision makers are held to account (for example, through Overview and Scrutiny). Knowing this will help you to raise issues around service improvement at the appropriate forums or direct them to the relevant people.

Guidance – How are decisions made?

Councils operate one of the following models:

• leader and cabinet
• an executive mayor and cabinet
• a committee system
• arrangements prescribed by the Secretary of State

Your council's complaints procedures

Your council will have corporate complaints procedures and statutory complaints procedures if it is responsible for public health and providing adults children’s social care. These are published on the council’s website. You need to understand how these work and where to find them, so you can give appropriate advice to the complainant.  

What to do with complaints you receive

Establish your own process for handling complaints, so that you record information properly, refer complaints to the right place and can monitor complaints information to help improve services in the future.

As a councillor: 

• You make use of personal data provided by your council in the same way as an officer of the council might make use of data.
• You use personal case work material in your own right when you collect or are given personal data through communications with your residents.  

This means that you will need to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018. The LGA’s GDPR Guidance for members provides you with a straightforward breakdown of your data protection responsibilities as a Data Controller, as defined by the Regulation and Act. 

What happens when a complaint is not resolved?

If a complainant is not satisfied with a council’s response, once it has progressed through the council’s complaints handling process, they may complain to an ombudsman scheme. A complaint may be referred to one of three ombudsman schemes, which each deal with different types of complaints. You need to be aware of what these are so that you can provide information and support to the complainant. 

In some cases, complainants may decide to challenge a council’s actions through the courts. The courts usually expect people to use alternative dispute mechanisms such as an ombudsman before going to court.  

All the ombudsmen listed below will normally only look at complaints that have first been referred to the organisation involved and responded to by them. This gives the organisation a chance to try and put things right locally, without an ombudsman’s involvement. The thinking behind addressing issues locally is that councils are often best placed to make decisions and implement changes more quickly.

If it is not possible to resolve a complaint, the complainant can take the issue up with the relevant ombudsman.

Guidance – Ombudsman services

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO)

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman is responsible for dealing with complaints about councils in England. The Ombudsman is also responsible for dealing with complaints about the actions of private care providers.  

The Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code sets out expectations in relation to complaint handling and the oversight of the complaint handling process.  

The LGSCO investigates complaints about alleged ‘maladministration’ or ‘service failure’ but usually use the term ‘fault’ to describe these. It is not an appeal body and won’t take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, the Ombudsman will look at the process an organisation followed to make its decision or take action. It can only consider a complaint if someone claims to have suffered a personal injustice and will consider if the organisation has already taken action to resolve this. 

There are some limits on what the LGSCO can investigate, such as complaints where a person has a right of appeal to a tribunal. There is more information about what the LGSCO can look at on their website.  

Organisations have an opportunity to consider and respond to complaints before they are referred to the LGSCO, and the Ombudsman will not consider a complaint unless this has happened. The LGSCO will normally consider actions of organisations acting on behalf of the council as a complaint against the council. It will hold the council responsible for a contractor’s actions.  

The LGSCO carries out joint investigations with certain other public service ombudsmen. For example, a complaint about a council’s social services and the NHS could be jointly investigated with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. These complaints would need to be directed to the LGSCO, who would manage the joint investigation with investigators from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). Similar arrangements exist between LGSCO and the Housing Ombudsman Service. 

Complainants can complain directly to the LGSCO and do not need to be referred by a local councillor or MP. However, both local councillors or MPs are able to complain to LGSCO on behalf of members of the public as well as in their own right, if they believe they have been caused an injustice. 

Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS)

The Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) is an impartial, free service for social housing residents. It makes final decisions on individual complaints made by tenants, shared owners and leaseholders of social providers who are a member of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme. 

The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 empowered the Housing Ombudsman to issue a code of practice about the procedures members of the Scheme should have in place for considering complaints. This also placed a duty on HOS to monitor compliance with this code of practice, named the Complaint Handling Code. 

As a councillor, you may be asked to represent or raise a complaint or enquiry for a resident to their landlord. The Housing Ombudsman Service's Code encourages a landlord to manage councillor enquiries in the same way it would handle contact made by a resident. Should either express dissatisfaction with the landlord’s approach to resolving a substantive issue, must be given the opportunity to make a complaint and receive a formal response, which can be referred to HOS once the final stage is completed, and referral rights to the Housing Ombudsman have been received. Residents no longer need to refer their complaint to a designated person such as a councillor or wait 8 weeks before HOS can consider their complaint. 

You can find out further information, including guidance on supporting a resident make or progress their complaint to the Housing Ombudsman Service on their website. 

Challenge 1 – How well-equipped are you to handle complaints?

Do you know all the information you need in order to handle complaints effectively? Consider the following statements to identify any gaps. If you answer ‘no’ to any of these statements, take some time to find the answers from your council’s website or your work colleagues:

• I know in detail which services my council does and does not provide
• I can describe the structure of my council
• I can describe how decisions made by my council are scrutinised
• I can name the people in my council responsible for making decisions about 1) planning applications, 2) environmental health and 3) adult social care
• I can go straight to my council’s complaints webpage
• I can give examples of three things that my council’s standard complaints procedure does not cover
• I can state how many days within which my council promises to fully respond to a complaint.

If you answer ‘no’ to any of the following statements, there is more information later in this workbook:

• I have a formal process for recording all the complaints that I receive
• I can quickly and easily retrieve information about complaints I have received in the past six months
• I feel confident referring complaints to the ombudsmen and know when to do this
• I know where to find information about complaints made regarding my council
• I can describe what information is provided in an LGSCO focus report.

As a councillor, you need to find out as much as possible about any complaint you receive and then decide the most appropriate way to respond to it. Being familiar with your council’s complaints procedures will help you to advise the complainant on how to go about submitting their complaint.

You can also support them by making sure that they understand the procedures and by keeping in touch with them as their complaint is processed. A crucial part of your role is to identify any reasonable adjustments that need to be made so that you can ensure that these are accounted for when the complaint is processed. For example, if the complainant cannot understand written information, you can make sure they are able to submit their complaint verbally and receive information they require in an appropriate format. A child or young person may need an advocate to act on their behalf, and you can advise the complaints team if this is the case.  

Guidance – Complaints involving children

Councils will assess whether a child is mature enough to make a complaint and understand its implications. This is undertaken by children’s services, which often asks an independent qualified person, from organisations, such as Barnardo’s or the NSPCC, to do a 'Gillick competency' and 'Fraser guidelines' assessment for them.

This provides a recognised benchmark for balancing children’s rights and wishes with a council's responsibility to keep them safe from harm. You will not be involved in this assessment, but you should be aware of it so that you can provide information and advice.

You must also be alert for potential issues the complainant may talk about that require other action. For example, you have a responsibility to report any concerns you have that care being provided is causing abuse, harm or neglect, or that vulnerable adults and children are being exploited in any way, for example by web/phone scams or hate crimes.

Your council will have an emergency duty officer/ help desk for adults’ and children’s services whose phone number should be on the council’s website. Your local police service may also have a vulnerable adults’ and/or children’s unit; the receptionist answering the phone will know who to contact. You should call the police if you have any concerns or suspicions that a crime has been committed.

Hints and tips – About your role

Do:

• support the complainant by helping them to resolve the problem at a local level and directing their complaint to the appropriate service area or complaints team
• signpost the complainant to useful information and organisations, even if the complaint will not be dealt with by the council
• facilitate communication, meetings, and enquiries within the council on the complainant’s behalf
• ensure reasonable adjustments are made, if necessary
• follow the complaint through to its resolution and keep in touch with the complainant
• raise any service improvement issues that you identify.

Don't:

• make promises you cannot keep
• guarantee a particular outcome for the complainant
• attempt to influence a complaints procedure
• assume that stages of a complaints procedure can be omitted because you are involved
• give legal advice
• make decisions for the complainant.

To handle any complaints you receive, we advise you to follow the steps below:

• gather information
• evaluate the complaint
• log the complaint
• respond to the complainant to let them know what you are doing
• refer the complaint to either your council's complaints team or to the appropriate authority if the complaint is not within your council's remit
• track progress
• if the complaint is unresolved after progressing through the complaints procedure, refer the complainant to the appropriate ombudsman (where it is a complaint against the council, the council’s official response should include the contact details for the ombudsman). 

Gather information

At this point you want to gather as much information as possible so that you fully understand the complaint and can decide if anyone else needs to be involved and what should happen next. Here is an information checklist of things to find out:

• details of the complainant – full name, age, contact details
• what went wrong – exact and concise details of the problem, including dates and times if appropriate
• what the effect was – the LGSCO calls this the ‘injustice’ – knowing this will make it easier for you to express empathy, and will aid the complaints team in establishing more about the complaint and a potential remedy
• desired outcome – identify what the complainant would like the outcome of the complaint to be – some complainants have unrealistic expectations: for example, it is unlikely that the council will be able to give them large sums of financial compensation such as those awarded by the courts
• reasonable adjustments – find out whether any reasonable adjustments need to be made, and whether an advocate is required
• safeguarding issues – be alert for any other action that may need to be taken in relation to a vulnerable adult or child.

Hints and tips – Questioning techniques for gathering information

An effective questioning technique for gathering information is to use open and closed questions.

Closed questions

Closed questions have only one answer which will usually be a fact and is often ‘yes ‘or ‘no’.

Closed questions are:

• easy and quick to answer
• good for putting people at ease early in the conversation
• good for gathering and expanding on information
• good for receiving confirmation of an outcome.

Open questions

Open questions require more information in the response to them. They give the person answering an opportunity to explain their opinions, ideas, and feelings in their own words.

Open questions:

• make people feel that you believe they are worth listening to
• help to clarify a person’s issues, needs and perspectives
• start with words like ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘why’, and ‘describe’
• help the complainant to make decisions.

Evaluate the complaint

Once you have all the information, you can decide whether the complaint is something that should be dealt with by your council’s complaints team. A valid complaint is about services provided by the council, whether those services are provided directly by the council or by a third party, private company, or volunteer group on their behalf.

A valid complaint could, for example, be about:

• the way a service has been delivered
• a service that hasn’t been delivered
• the way a decision has been made that has caused problems for the complainant.

For example, the complaint could be that the council took too long to do something, failed to meet expected standards of service, or provided wrong information. 

The LGSCO and HOS Complaint Handling Codes say a complaint is: 

‘an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual or group of individuals.’ 

Sometimes complaints are made that should either be handled by another organisation or are not appropriate to refer to the council’s complaints team. These kinds of complaints could, for example, be about:

• a service request – the complaint may be a request for a service but could become a complaint if it is not dealt with properly – find out more about what the complainant wants and identify the relevant service area to direct them to (many councils have a case management system for you to use to do this). The council should have an opportunity to put things right before a complaint is made. The LGSCO Code contains a definition of a service request.
• an appeal or review – the complainant may have a right to appeal a council’s decision or to request a review – your complaints team will be able to advise you on when this is the case, and whether the council or an independent panel would carry out the appeal or review
• ongoing court proceedings – if you receive a complaint about something that is being considered by the courts, for example in family court proceedings, the council complaints team will not consider the complaint until the court case has finished; however, there may be elements of the complaint that are not covered by the court proceedings, which could be handled by the council – your complaints team will be able to advise you.
• council policies or procedures – a complaint about incorrect application of council procedure, and therefore a potential fault in its decision-making, would be handled by the complaints procedure; however, if the complaint is about the content or wording of a council’s policy or procedure this cannot be dealt with through the complaints procedure – a more appropriate way of handling this would be for councillors to discuss the issue when the policy is next revised, and for the complainant to express their views when the policy next goes out for public consultation
• something unreasonable – you may become aware of a complainant who makes unreasonable complaints persistently – refer these to your complaints team.The LGSCO has produced a guide on managing unreasonable actions. 

The council’s complaints policy should explain the type of complaints that are generally excluded from the complaints policy. The LGSCO has published a recommended list of exclusions. 

If you are in any doubt about any of the above, seek advice from your council's complaints team, or refer the complaint directly to them.

A complainant can submit a complaint to the council without involving you: if they ask for your help, you can support them to ensure that they have included all relevant information. 

Log the complaint

The complaints you receive could be made by email, letter, telephone or in person. However a complaint is made, it is important that you keep a record of it. You need to record the information you gathered earlier, as listed in the checklist, as well as any actions you have taken or are planning to take, with dates and times. To make sure you record the appropriate information each time, create a document template with headings based on the checklist. Advise the complainant to keep their own records of whom they speak to and when.

How you store complaints records, and any associated documentation, is as important as the actual records you create. It is worth taking some time to consider your requirements, particularly in the context of service improvement. For example, you might want to be able to:

• see how many complaints you have received about a particular service area
• check which complaints have yet to be resolved
• review similar complaints made by different people, for comparison
• sort the complaints by service area, complaint, complainant, date, status, and so on
• view all the documented evidence that supports a complaint
• update information or add documentation.

Be mindful that information you record could be subject to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and could potentially be seen by the complainant. Keep the information factual and non-judgmental, and avoid making any personal comments.

A good way of keeping track of records is to maintain a spreadsheet with quick-reference information, which you can use to sort information, update progress or actions and reference where you have saved associated documentation, such as a detailed summary of the complaint. 

The table below shows you an example. Notice how:

• a code has been used for the service area: ' TH' refers to t ransport and h ighways and ' EW' refers to environment and waste
• the status has been colour-coded for quick reference
• a reference code has been created from the date (YYMMDD format), service area and surname – this can be used to prefix any folder or file names.

Hints and tips – naming files and folders

If you prefix electronic file or folder names with the date in the format YYMMDD, they will appear in date order if sorted alphabetically.

A good way to include a reference to someone’s name is to use the first four letters of their surname and the first letter of their first name; for example, Martin Williams would be WILLM.

Make a reference in your records to the type of complaint, or the service area to which it relates – this will help you to quickly identify similar records.

Use templates for documents – this will remind you of what information to include.

However you decide to manage your records, be consistent! Consistency is the key to managing them successfully.

Challenge 2 – What are your complaints record requirements?

Think about:

• how you want to use information about the complaints you receive
• any ideas you have for keeping your records.

Make some notes to develop your preferred approach to recording complaints.

Respond to the complainant

Once you have decided whether your council should handle a complaint, identified any reasonable adjustments required, raised any safeguarding issues, and logged all the information, you are ready to respond to the complainant and refer the complaint to the appropriate place.

Taking information from your records, provide the complainant with a written summary of the complaint (this can be by email), remaining non- judgemental and using the complainant’s own words where possible. This will help to check your understanding. Also include any actions you have taken or plan to take.

If the complaint is related to services provided by your council it will be handled by your complaints team, so provide the complainant with information about your council’s complaints process, how to proceed with the complaint and what your involvement will/will not be. It is good practice for you to communicate with the complaints team yourself, so they are aware of your contact with the complainant. Make sure to pass on all the information you have gathered to date, including any supporting evidence.

If the complaint needs to be handled by another authority or organisation, explain to the complainant why this is and provide as much information as you can to direct them to the appropriate place. Again, explain what involvement, if any, you will have from this point on.

Keep track of progress

Check on progress with the complaints team. It is important to keep in touch with the complainant so that they feel supported and confident that their complaint is being processed.

Remember to keep your records updated with progress, and to keep records of any meetings or conversations that take place.

Make sure you stick to the file naming and storage conventions you decided on earlier!

Resolution

At the end of the complaints procedure, the complaints team should notify the complainant of the outcome and what actions have or will be taken in response to the complaint. The LGSCO has published guidance on remedies which sets out examples of what action can be taken to resolve complaints. This includes guidance on writing a good apology. 

It is good practice for you to contact them as well, to check that they are happy with the result and to formally close the matter with them.

If the complaints team decides the complaint cannot or will not be resolved by the council, the complainant can raise the matter with the LGSCO. They can go directly to the LGSCO themselves, or you can complain on their behalf. Be sure to provide all the information you have been recording throughout the process.

The complainant also has the option of challenging the way a decision was made by the council (rather than the conclusion it reached) through a judicial review. However, legal action can be costly and complex for the complainant, while the council will usually be defended by an insurance company or their legal team.

You should not give legal advice. Refer your complainant to an organisation that can offer legal advice, such as Citizen’s Advice, Mind, or the Children’s Legal Centre.

Whatever the outcome, remember to update your records.

Failure to collect bins and investigate reasons for missed collections  

LGSCO found fault when a Council repeatedly failed to collect Mrs X’s food waste bin. LGSCO found this was not an isolated incident and other residents experienced similar issues with a new contractor.  

LGSCO found the Council did not have adequate processes in place for monitoring missed collections and had wrongly advised Mrs X it could take action against the contractor. The LGSCO also found the Council had failed to replace Mrs X’s bin when it went missing.  

LGSCO recommended the Council apologise to Mrs X for the distress caused as a result of the repeated missed collections and pay her £100 to recognise the impact this had on her. LGSCO also recommended the Council monitor food waste collections for 12 weeks and investigate the reasons for any further missed collections. 

As well as ensuring that individual complaints are handled properly, as a councillor, you are also responsible for using information about complaints to inform and improve the services delivered by the council for your residents.

By reviewing information about complaints related to your council you will be able to spot patterns and trends highlighting issues affecting the wellbeing and living conditions of your residents. Try to establish a routine for this, for example, decide how often you will review your own complaints records, and consider opportunities for getting further information from your peers and colleagues.

Your complaints team will be able to tell you if they publish any information on the complaints they handle. The LGSCO, as the ombudsman dealing with council-related complaints, publishes several documents on its website which will be useful to you. 
 
These are:

• decision statements
• reports and further reports
• annual review
• focus reports.

Decision statements

The LGSCO publishes decision statements, which detail the outcome of complaints that it investigates. These are anonymised to protect personal data but do contain the name of the local authority involved. Decisions are published after they are shared with the parties involved, to allow time for any further action to be taken. You can search through these decision statements by council, topic or date range.  

Reports and further reports

Where the complaint raises issues of wider public interest, or where the council is unwilling to remedy the issues, the LGSCO may decide to issue a public report. This is a more detailed account of the investigation, which is shared with the parties involved in the complaint and with relevant media. 

Where a local authority fails to comply with the recommendations contained in a report, the LGSCO may issue a further report to encourage local scrutiny of the council’s decision not to remedy the injustice identified. 

Reports, further reports, and accompanying press releases, are published in the news section of the LGSCO website. You can also type the name of your local authority into the search box and all information about your council will appear in the search results. 

Annual review

Each year, the chief executive and leader of every council receives an annual review letter from the LGSCO, with a view to encouraging accountability. This provides an overview of the council’s performance in responding to complaints, including data about how many complaints were referred to the LGSCO and their outcomes. It also raises any specific concerns, such as non-compliance with LGSCO recommendations and delays in responding to queries. 

Annual reviews also cover complaints handling for social care services and include information about private care providers. 

The letter is also copied to the chair of the relevant scrutiny committee (or relevant function) to encourage and enable oversight of complaints by members. 

Focus reports and practitioner guides

When the LGSCO identifies that a particular aspect of local public services is gathering complaints, or where a trend is emerging, it publishes a focus report or practitioner guide. The reports use case studies to identify common failings in service delivery and to highlight how such issues can be avoided in the future. Recent topics have included services for adoptive families and their children, domestic abuse and housing decisions and household waste offences.  

Useful links – Finding Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) documents 

Documents, factsheets, newsletters and guidance information published by the LGSCO is available at www.lgo.org.uk/information-centre/information-for-organisations-we-investigate/councils 

Failure to respond to a complaint and keep proper records 

The LGSCO found fault when a council took over five months to respond to Mr X’s concerns about heavy goods vehicles driving past his home. The Council took two months to respond to Mr X’s complaints instead of the 20 working days set out in its policy. 

The Council told the LGSCO that it had met with the organisation responsible for the heavy goods vehicle movements to find a solution and the issue had been discussed at council meetings. However, the Council was unable to provide records of any discussions with local businesses or minutes of council meetings where the issues were discussed. 

The LGSCO recommended the Council pay Mr X £200 to recognise the distress caused by the delay responding to his initial correspondence and the unnecessary time and trouble he was put to pursing the complaint. LGSCO also recommended the Council seek advice on whether the road outside Mr X’s road was suitable for heavy goods vehicles. 

Oversight of complaints handling 

Councillors have an important role and play a key part in the overall accountability and governance of complaints.  

The role of the Member Responsible for Complaints (MRC) is to champion a positive complaint handling culture and build effective relationships with complaints teams, residents, the council’s audit committee as well wider teams. Their role is to:  

• Ensure complaints data and trends are analysed and routinely considered as part of data about the council’s wider performance.
• Provide challenge and hold senior officers to account for the council’s performance in complaint handling and management.
• Provide strategic leadership to drive a culture of openness where complaints are welcomed and valued.   

The LGSCO’s Guide for members responsible for complaints: Effective scrutiny of complaint systems provides further information on the MRC’s role and responsibilities. 

The council should appoint a suitably senior officer to oversee its complaint handling performance. This person should assess any themes or trends to identify potential systemic issues, serious risks, or policies and procedures that require revision.  

The MRC should seek assurances from the lead officer, the complaints team and where appropriate the operational teams that complaints are being managed, change is happening and that residents are being heard through the process.   

The MRC should receive regular information on complaints that provides insight on the organisation’s complaint handling performance. The councillor should have access to suitable information and staff to perform this role and report on their findings. 

As a minimum, the MRC should receive:  

• regular updates on the volume, categories, and outcomes of complaints, alongside complaint handling performance
• regular reviews of issues and trends arising from complaint handling; and
• the annual complaints performance and service improvement report. 

In addition to the role of the MRC, your council’s audit committee has an important role to play in seeking assurance that the council has adequate internal controls and is meeting its statutory duties. Complaints can pose a significant financial and reputational risk to the council so it is vital that the committee understands the level of risk the council is exposed to, trends and the impact they may or have had. It is equally important that the committee understand the improvement actions being undertaken to address significant areas of complaint and transparently hold the MRC and responsible senior officers to account for their actions and performance. As such, it is good practice for audit committees to review the council’s LGSCO annual review letter. 

Overview and scrutiny committees also have a vital role to play in reviewing complaint trends. It is vital that they do this regularly in order to understand the effect council policy has on service users, whether changes to policy would have a positive impact and to hold decision makers to account for their policy making actions. 

A comprehensive approach to complaints processing and councillor oversight 

North Tyneside's Customer First Office (Customer Services team) receives all complaints and councillor enquiries on behalf of the Council and triages each to ensure residents get the right response.  

Councillor enquiries are case managed by team members (with the exception of housing enquiries) who work with services and councillors to get the appropriate response in a timely way for residents.  A tiering system is used to decide whether the team have the knowledge to respond or if they need service area input. 

The team is trained and able to respond to complaints in a range of areas: they utilise a knowledge hub that stores relevant information and knowledge for use by the whole team. This helps to gather intelligence about ward specific issues. These issues are then shared with councillors to help them understand the most significant issues residents are reporting.  

The team also carries out training with services to ensure they fully understand the complaints process and know how to provide a quality response.  

The Council introduced an assurance framework for complaints in April last year, detailing how it shares and reports complaint information within the organisation and to Cabinet. This includes regular dashboards to directors and the Member Responsible for Complaints as well as six-monthly reports to Cabinet on complaint activity. 

Source: North Tyneside Council, 2025. 

The way you handle complaints and pursue issues of service improvement contributes to how effective you are as a councillor and how effective the council is overall in serving the needs of local residents.

You represent the people on your ward and their satisfaction with the services the council provides is a measure of your success.

To handle complaints effectively, and to help drive service improvement in your council:

• be prepared with all the information you need about how complaints are handled in your council
• recognise when a complaint needs to be referred to another organisation
• follow the complaints procedures set out by your council
• regularly review complaints data to identify trend or patterns
• raise any issues you identify as soon as possible.

You will find more detailed information and examples about complaints handling in the e-learning module that accompanies this workbook.

Guidance – Where do you go from here?

Look back over the material contained in earlier sections of this workbook and consider the following:

• Do you have all the information you need to handle complaints effectively?
• Does the way you process, and record complaints enable you to review complaints data?
• Is there anything you could do better?
• Do you know how oversight of complaints works at your council?
• Have you established a routine for regularly reviewing complaints information about your council?
• Have you reviewed the information available from the LGSCO website about your council?

Local Government Ombudsman

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Housing Ombudsman Service 

Councillor hub | Local Government Association

Our website provides invaluable sources of help and advice for all those in local government and contains guidance and case studies on all aspects of the councillor role.

LG Inform is our free data benchmarking platform.

LGSCO Complaint Handling Code