Scrutiny and oversight

‘Organisations should look beyond the circumstances of the individual complaint and consider whether service improvements can be made as a result of any learning from the complaint’ (Paragraph 9.1 of the Complaint Handling Code)

The Code says organisations should appoint a ‘suitable senior person’ to oversee its complaint’s handling performance. This may be carried out alongside other duties and the role may be delegated to other staff members with the person retaining overall responsibility.

We believe this role is best suited to someone within the organisation who has a direct line of contact with the Chief Executive and Member Responsible for Complaints. The person is not expected to deal with individual complaints, even as a point of escalation, but instead oversee complaint handling performance across the organisation.

The Code also says that organisations should “assign lead responsibility for complaints in governance arrangements”. We refer to this as the ‘Member Responsible for Complaints’. However, the role may be carried out by more than one person, depending on how an organisation’s governance arrangements are structured.

We have produced separate good practice guides for statutory officers within local authorities and members.

We believe that complaints systems should be included in organisational risk registers. Data about complaint handling forms a key part of the Government’s best value standards for local authorities. The accompanying guidance says best value authorities “must demonstrate good governance, including a positive organisational culture, across all their functions and effective risk management’’. It is therefore important local authorities have well functioning complaints systems in place to support effective risk management and to ensure they are meeting best value standards.