Residents in Dumfries and Galloway are increasingly unhappy with the level of service provided by the council – after the number of complaints nearly doubled in a year.
The local authority received 534 complaints in 2021/22, which is a significant increase on 281 the previous year.
The biggest gripe for the region’s residents is over an “inadequate quality or standard of service, or an unreasonable delay in providing a service”. These reasons accounted for 181 complaints.
Next was the conduct or attitude of a member of council staff/contractor with householders contacting the council 95 times over incidents.
The council failing to respond to a phone call/correspondence riled people up so much that 67 complaints were made.
The details are laid bare in an annual complaints monitoring report for 2021/22, which is due to be tabled at the council’s audit, risk, and scrutiny committee next Tuesday.
The report states: “The number of complaints received by our council in 2021/22 significantly increased from the previous year. This is the highest number of complaints that we have recorded over the past five years.
“The low figures for 2020/21 can likely be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic and the disruption to public services due to national lockdown.
“As lockdown restrictions eased, we saw a return to normal levels of complaints. The marked increase in the number of complaints received for 2021/22 could also be partly attributed to better awareness of the CHP (complaints handling process) both internally and externally.”
The majority of complaints were made via the web form on the council website (41 percent), then by email (35 percent), telephone (13 percent), in person at a contact centre (seven percent), and by letter (four percent).
However, the council has improved its performance in the average time it takes to respond to complaints, as well as the percentage of complaints closed within the set timescales when compared to the last two years.
Dawn Roberts, council chief executive, wrote in the annual report: “We value all feedback we receive from our customers as this helps us to improve the way we do things.
“Please continue to give us your feedback on any aspect of the council’s services, all of which have contributed to the production of this annual complaints monitoring report.”
The council adopted the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman’s (SPSO) model complaint handling procedure nearly a decade ago.
As part of a national complaints handling process, all 32 Scottish councils are required to monitor complaints against a range of eight key performance indicators and then publish an annual report.
