Annual review letters

We write to councils and other authorities within our jurisdiction each year to feedback on performance and share key statistics.

The statistics we report focus on three key areas:  

• Complaints upheld (including by population)
• Compliance with recommendations
• Satisfactory remedies provided by the authority
• We compare the three key annual statistics with similar types of authorities to work out an average level of performance. We do this for County Councils, District Councils, Metropolitan Boroughs, Unitary Councils, and London Boroughs.
• We also provide three spreadsheets detailing a case by case breakdown of complaints we have received, decided and recorded compliance outcomes for during the year. These spreadsheets are not published.

The letters place on record, and in the public domain, our experience of each authority and summarise key statistics, supporting organisations to better understand their performance, to improve their complaint handling, and local public services.

Link Officers can use the letter to raise the profile of complaints resolution, highlighting areas for improvement and sharing successes, initiating discussions and agreeing actions with key officers and elected members. The data we publish about others can be used to compare performance with neighbouring authorities.

Annual letters are addressed to the Chief Executive and copied to the dedicated Link Officer we have on file.

In addition, we share the letter with the Council Leader (or equivalent role) and Chair of the relevant scrutiny committee (or equivalent function) to encourage effective ownership and oversight of complaints across an organisation.

Letters are issued in July and cover the previous financial year. They are issued to councils and authorities ahead of being published on our website.

In addition to annual review letters, our interactive map publishes performance data for all English councils. It includes links to our published decision statements and public reports and has information about service improvements agreed by each council.

The publication of our annual letters coincides with an annual review report looking at the state of local government complaints, and the release of our data in spreadsheet format.

The statistics we publish reflect the data we hold and may not match the data held by organisations. For example, we report enquiries from people we signpost back to organisations and we may categorise the subject of complaints differently. We are always happy to hear feedback about the annual letters or other data we publish but cannot accommodate requests for further information.