REPORT OF THE CUSTOMER & SUPPORT SERVICES SCRUTINY
Feedback from the meeting
– 28th August 2007
Recommendations:
 Members urge that the City Solicitor should continue to drive improvements
with the corporate complaints procedure.
Actions:
 A progress update on the Corporate complaints procedure will be provided for
Scrutiny in February.
 Scrutiny Support will meet with David Horsler and Neil Watts to progress the
PMF reporting with regard to equalities outcomes, and report back to Scrutiny
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
This report concerns the matters considered by C&SS Scrutiny on 28th August, 2007.
Issues considered were: Annual Ombudsman’s Letter
 Corporate Complaints Procedure
 Fairness and Freedom the Equalities Review
BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS:
Reports to Scrutiny 28th August, 2007.
These can be found on SOLAR
CONTACT OFFICER: Peter Kidd, Senior Scrutiny Support Officer
Tel: 793 3322 E-mail: peter.kidd@salford.gov.uk
WARD(S) TO WHICH REPORT RELATE(S):
KEY COUNCIL POLICIES:
All
Corporate Complaints Policy
Equalities
DETAILS

Annual Ombudsman’s Letter
Anthony Rich, City Solicitor, attended to present the Annual Ombudsman Letter and
the councils response, which detailed actions undertaken to address issues raised by
the Ombudsman.
Members were pleased to hear that overall the number of complaints to the
Ombudsman were down and a significant number were judged to be pre mature and
were referred back to the council for resolution. Levels of compensation were modest
and the risk of higher levels arising from litigation are defensible, as the council
ensures it fulfils its duty to follow proper procedures and works to ensure that it does
not raise inappropriate expectations.
The council accepts comments and complaints and regards the complaints
procedure as a valuable learning tool and helps the standards of service delivery
meet expectations.
The councils website has been adjusted in line with the ombudsman’s comments, a
training course has been arranged for relevant staff to be delivered by the
ombudsman, and the council is trying to reduce the timescale for response in line
with the commissions targets. Though it was said that the timescale target should be
regarded with caution, as a thorough well researched and qualified response is
preferably to a hasty one that is prepared to simply meet the target.

Corporate Complaints Procedure.
Roger Bell, Assistant Director of Finance, and chair of the complaints officer network,
assisted by Anthony Rich, discussed the progress made with the Corporate
Complaints Procedure following consideration by Scrutiny in May 2007. It was
restated that the procedure compliments other existing complaints mechanisms and
will not replace them, some directorates have legal obligation and others need to be
very sensitive regarding the handling of complaints.
Roger circulated a briefing note which detailed a response to each of the issues
members had previously raised.
ICT are working on the technical improvements.
The customer contact centre is progressing the development with the single contact
number and a protocol for dealing with elected members.
The persistent complainant policy has been developed and circulated for comment to
complaints officers.
The procedure for receipt of complaints via the Chief execs office is still to be
reviewed.
Once the above steps are complete the relevant leaflets, forms and publicity material
available across the city will be redrafted and relaunched.
Members appreciated the work that has been done to assure them that their
previously raised concerns were being addressed and importantly that complaints are
taken seriously and were being dealt with professionally. Overall there is a
confidence that a complaint is recognised and captured correctly and where possible
resolved, and importantly as a result, where appropriate, practices revised and
lessons learned.
Members asked for a progress update in 6 months.

Fairness and Freedom, the Equalities Review
David Horsler, Assistant Director HR, presented Scrutiny with an overview of equality
issues and also introduced a proposal as to the future monitoring of equality related
outcomes, utilising the council’s Performance Management Framework (PMF).
Monday October 1st see the creation of the commission for Equality & Human Rights,
replacing the three existing commissions, The new commission will address
persistent inequalities, standardise approaches across race, gender, disability, age,
religion and sexuality, and will focus on outcomes, using as a measure the “10
Domains”, measurable properties that indicate whether a group of people are able to
enjoy life equally when compared with others.
The council will have an integrated duty to promote equality.
Public service agreements must include equality measures and rewards will depend
on performance achieved.
The PMF must include measurable equality targets.
Procurement and commissioning of services must be used positively, the council
should use its economic power to influence other organisations in a positive direction
with regard to equalities.
The council must be aware of it does and how it impacts on people, and what the
communities priorities are. David’s section is currently urging the council directorates
to work toward this, which will then allow us to focus on how the gaps between where
we are and where we want to be can be narrowed.
David also discussed the ongoing consultation, which is about to close on the
“Framework for Fairness, the Single Equalities Bill”, which will become an Act by
spring 2008. This sets out to harmonise legislation, modernise it and make it more
effective in tackling discrimination and disadvantage.. David highlighted the main
points and the likely changes that the consultation will effect.
David then demonstrated how scrutiny could possibly utilise the PMF to monitor
equality outcomes. Action Plans as created by divisions or service areas within each
directorate can be monitored, as well as performance measured against national and
local indicators. The audit commissions performance indicators is changing from April
2008. although we can try and establish the process there is little point at the moment
working in detail, as indicators could change significantly from the early draft list of
indicators. Instead work will be carried out with the scrutiny team on how we can
establish a reporting mechanism suitable for the scrutiny of equality across all
committees.
Scrutiny Support will meet with David and Neil Watts, policy & Improvement to
progress this.

Report from the previous meeting and the Forward Plan
There were no matters arising from the report of the previous meeting.
Though the quality of the forward plan was discussed, this has been the subject of a
previous consideration by this committee. Scrutiny will discuss the issue further with
committee services. The decision on office moves and refurbishments was briefly
discussed, but this has previously been considered by Budget Scrutiny.

Any Other Business
There was no other business
The next meeting is
Monday 24th September at 2pm at the Civic Centre.
There will be a briefing for members only at 1.30pm