Link Officer Liaison Seminar
January/ February 2013
Nigel Ellis
Paul Conroy
David Pollard
Seminar content
• The challenges for LGO
• Our new approach
• Intake
• Assessment
• Investigation
• Publishing Statements of Reasons
• Changes to the housing jurisdiction
• Welfare reform
The challenges for LGO
Challenges for LGO: doing more with less
The context:
• Funding cut by 37% by 2014/15
• Increasingly challenging public sector environment likely to
lead to increased complaint volumes
Our response:
• New business model – whole organisation restructure
• New assessment unit for early resolution of complaints
• Simplified, streamlined processes focused on remedying
the most serious injustice
• Head office in Coventry
• New, integrated approach to “public value”
Challenges for LGO: accountability to Parliament
CLG Select Committee report on LGO (July 2012)
•
•
•
•
Minimise delays in investigating complaints
Finalise implementation of organisational changes
More engagement with staff
Develop a methodology for measuring customer satisfaction
Challenges for LGO: accountability to Parliament
Related actions
•
•
•
•
New streamlined processes with enhanced performance
monitoring
Organisational changes rolled out (April 2013)
Staff survey completed and key messages published
Benchmarking carried out against other Ombudsmen’s
approach to customer satisfaction research
Our new approach:
Intake, Assessment & Investigation
Our new approach: LGO’s Transformation Plan
•
Significant budget reduction
•
Independent strategic business review
•
Consultation on proposed changes
•
Intake and assessment
•
Review criteria / threshold for investigation
•
No compromise in quality
•
Focused approach to ‘public value’
Our new approach: Flow Chart
Intake - 2 Teams of Advisors based in Coventry
• Approx 100,000 contacts (calls, emails and letters)
• Advice given / clarify reason for contacting LGO / viable cases
identified
17.5k
Assessment - 5 Teams (2 x London, 1 x Coventry, 2 x York)
• 17.5k Viable cases
• 20 Working day time target to assess each case
• No geographical allocations
• Approximately 7.6k to be forwarded for Investigation
7.6k
Investigation - 8 Teams
• Each team to be assigned specified Local Authorities and other
bodies in jurisdiction
• Maximising public value from Investigations
Our new approach: Planning assumptions
Pass to
Investigation
7,600
Intake –
100,000
Enquiries
Total
coming
from Intake
17,500
Closed in
Assessment
5,000
Premature
4,900
Our new approach: The benefits
•
A service which deals with complaints swiftly and
proportionately, with straightforward cases handled at the
earliest possible stage
•
Only those cases which merit more detailed work will be
passed through for investigation
•
We can divert resources between intake, assessment and
investigation as needed
Our new approach: Intake
Our new approach: Intake
•
The Intake Team will handle all new public enquiries, and all resubmitted complaints, through a single web complaint form, a single
phone number, and a single contact address
•
The team will address three key questions in relation to every enquiry:
•
Is it a matter that might be for the LGO (rather than another body)?
•
Is it obviously premature?, and
•
Is there enough basic information to make it viable to pass on to the
assessment stage?
Our new approach: Intake
The Intake Team will not:
•
Give advice about our jurisdiction, beyond basic expectation management
and identifying complaints that are clearly ‘not for us’ (i.e. for other bodies,
such as other ombudsman schemes, utilities, consumer complaints etc)
•
Write to complainants to tell them that their complaint has been transferred
to assessment
•
Correspond with BinJs (other than for vulnerable complainants)
•
Check whether the person complaining has locus to complain on behalf of
the person affected – this is a task for the assessment unit
•
Request any documents from the complainant
Our new approach: Intake
Our new approach: Intake
Total No. of Contacts 2012
11702
42759
44099
Phone
Email and Web
Post
Our new approach: Intake
Complaint categories 2012
0%
20%
Adult Care Services
11%
Benefits & Tax
11%
Corporate & Other Services
5%
Education & Childrens Services
16%
Environmental Services & Public Protection & Regulation
10%
Highways & Transport
9%
Housing
Other
Planning & Development
18%
7%
13%
Our new approach: Intake
•
•
Headline KPIs:
•
Answer 95% of calls within 1 minute
•
Answer rate of 98.5%
•
All new enquiries to be processed within 1 day
Other measurements:
•
Overall volumes
•
Categories and outcomes
•
Average Handling Times
•
Compliance with LGO Quality Framework
Our new approach: Intake
Clearly
Premature
Incomplete
Enquiry
Enquiry
Non LGO
Viable
Enquiry
Our new approach: Intake
•
Advisers will make an assumption about prematurity based on the
information presented to them
•
For clearly premature complaints the adviser will tell the complainant
to contact the Council directly
•
Follow up with a ‘premature decision letter’ and any relevant
factsheets
•
If unclear, advisers will attempt to contact complainant to discuss. If
no contact can made but there is enough information to form a
‘viable’ complaint it will be sent to Assessment
Our new approach: Intake
•
Advisers will not hold on to cases while they establish prematurity
•
Advisers are not expected to contact the BinJ to make enquiries that
is the role of the Assessment team
•
There will be no 10 day referral process
Our new approach: Intake
The information passed on to Assessment will contain as a minimum:
 The unique complaint number
 Sufficient contact details to get in touch with the complainant
 A ‘reason for contacting the LGO’ showing that the complaint ‘may be for us’
 A note of the body in jurisdiction where this is practical to identify (in the
case of private sector care, the postcode of the person affected will suffice),
and
 An assigned top-level complaint category
Our new approach: Assessment
Our new approach: Assessment
The Objective is to decide:“Should we initiate an investigation into
this complaint?”
A series of questions:
1. Is it premature? Council first exceptions no longer applied
2. Is it within jurisdiction (and whether discretion should be exercised
in appropriate instances)?
3. Is made by someone who has the locus to make the complaint?
4. Is it significant enough to merit an investigation? (judged against
the criteria contained in the LGOs’ ‘Assessment Code’)
5. Is it likely to lead to worthwhile outcome?
6. Can it be resolved more efficiently by a quick intervention at the
assessment stage? and
7. Does it contain sufficient information to proceed?
Target Time – a maximum of 20 working days from receipt in Intake
Our new approach: Assessment
The Assessment Code
• Something we can share with all our stakeholders. These are the
criteria against which we assess each and every complaint that comes to
us
• A two stage test:
1.
The Jurisdictional Stage (can we investigate)
2.
The Discretionary Stage (should we investigate)
- Injustice
- Fault
- Remedy
- Public Interest
Our new approach: Investigation
Our new approach: Investigation
•
All cases forwarded from Assessment will contain a clear audit trail of the
communication with the Council and complainant to date and an explanation
why the case was deemed fit for investigation, as well as a record of any
discretionary decisions made at that stage
•
The expectation is that the case will be Investigated
•
Decisions about jurisdiction kept under review but should only be changed
where new evidence emerges
•
Planning Assumption – 95 substantive decisions per Investigator per annum
•
Time targets for responses and our investigations – remain the same at
present – 28 days. 13 / 26 & 52 weeks
Our new approach: Investigation
•
Generic teams, with range of skills and experience.
•
Specialist expertise (e.g. adult social care, children and schools, planning) to
call on
•
Target of all complaints allocated to an investigator within 20 working days of
receipt by Intake. Generally allocation should be much quicker
•
Target of investigator making contact with the complainant within 20 working
days. The target may be reduced if allocation was not reasonably soon after
receipt by Intake
Our new approach: Investigation
•
Clear messages to Council and the complainant not to provide unnecessary
information
•
Our starting point is that we should share with both parties to the complaint
the information we rely on to make our decision
•
Normal practice to provide a copy of the complaint to the Council
•
No such thing as an informal enquiry
•
First enquiries by letter attached to email, normally giving 20 working days to
respond (but may ask urgent cases to be expedited)
•
Follow up enquiries normally by letter attached to email, but simple requests
for one or two documents may be by email without an attachment
Our new approach: Investigation
•
All investigations will have a provisional decision
•
The normal principle is that provisional decisions should be sent to all parties
at the same time
•
We intend to publish our decisions on our website from 2013/14. We are
working on a standard style and on quality standards
•
We are reviewing the way we express our decisions. Following a change in
the law, we will “complete” more investigations (and “discontinue” fewer)
Our new approach: Investigation
Maximising public value
•
We record learning points from investigations and feed those back to the Council at the time
•
We publish investigation reports on individual cases, and focus reports on issues, when we
consider it to be in the public interest. The six key reasons for publishing are:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Recurrent fault (specific subject or specific body in jurisdiction)
Significant fault, injustice or remedy
Non-compliance with an Ombudsman’s recommendation
High volume of complaints about one subject
Significant topical issue (e.g. new legislation)
Systemic problems and/or wider lessons
•
Where appropriate, we are keen to issue more reports of both types
•
We also provide training and are considering how else we can maximise the value of our
investigations
Our new approach: Progress so far
Our new approach: Progress so far
Early adoption/ piloting
•
Two Assessment Teams commenced work in London on 29.10.12
•
894 Cases assessed up until 31.12.12
•
Quick, informal enquiries made of Councils to establish prematurity / obtain
responses / planning officer’s reports etc.
•
Refining business processes / how we communicate with service users.
•
Adoption of the new arrangements in our York Office on 4 February
•
New arrangements fully in place by 1 April
Our new approach: Progress so far
Assessment outcomes
Our new approach: Progress so far
Our new approach: and you
Our new approach: and you
Benefits for you
•
Average response times will improve as more complaints are completed at the
assessment stage with quick response times to our enquiries
•
Not every decision made at the assessment stage will involve a provisional view, and
where a provisional view is needed, it will only be sent to the complainant as these will
be decisions not to investigate
•
The more complaints can be dealt with at the assessment stage, the fewer complaints
will go through to investigation and require:
1.
2.
3.
more detailed enquiries
more detailed provisional views to comment on, and
potentially, more critical outcomes
Our new approach: and you
What we need from you
A quick turn around on enquiries made at the assessment phase by
phone and email:
• Premature?
• Documents that already exist
• No new information
• Responses to suggested quick wins.
Publishing Statements of Reasons
Statements of Reasons:
What do we publish now?
•
Non compliance
•
Significant topical issues
•
Recurrent fault
•
Systemic problem/ wider lessons
•
Very significant maladministration or injustice
•
High volume of complaints of a single subject
Statements of Reasons:
Why publish more?
•
Transparency
•
Accountability
Statements of Reasons:
When will LGO start publishing?
•
For decisions made from April 2013
Statements of Reasons:
What will LGO publish?
•
All decisions
•
Full decisions
•
After three months
•
Searchable database
Statements of Reasons:
Consultation with Authorities
•
Consultation with Chief Executives in July 2011
•
Most were supportive
•
Questions raised about:
•
Seeing drafts prior to publication
•
Sensitive cases
•
Advance notice
Statements of Reasons:
How have LGO prepared?
•
Technical work
•
Development of new standards for decisions
•
New structure of decision statements
•
Staff training
•
Standard paragraphs
•
Stylewriter
•
Quality monitoring
Statements of Reasons:
Addressing concerns
•
We will listen to concerns about publishing a decision
•
Our independence means we do not need permission to
publish
Changes to the housing jurisdiction
Changes to the housing jurisdiction:
The Changes
• From 1 April 2013 LGO will no longer investigate complaints
about a council “in its capacity as a registered provider of social
housing... so far as they relate to the provision or management of
social housing” [Section 181 (1) Localism Act 2011]
• After this date The Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) will
deal with these complaints.
• Government says purpose is to create “a single Ombudsman
service dedicated to social housing complaints.”
Changes to the housing jurisdiction:
The role of LGO
LGO will continue to investigate complaints about:
•
Allocations (as defined in Part 6 of the 1996 Housing Act)
•
Homelessness
•
Anti-social behaviour (except where Council is using it’s
landlord function to enforce tenancy conditions)
Changes to the housing jurisdiction:
The role of the Housing Ombudsman
The Housing Ombudsman will investigate complaints about:
•
Housing management
•
Repairs
•
Leaseholds
•
Transfers and mutual exchanges
LGO and HOS can conduct joint investigations when necessary
Welfare reform
Welfare reform:
Universal credit
•
New single payment for people who are looking for work or on
a low income
•
Launched in 2013
•
Replaces number of other benefits
Welfare reform:
What is different
• Will be available to people who are in work and on a low income,
as well as to those who are out of work
• Managed online
• Will be responsive
• Support with housing costs will go direct to the claimant as part
of their monthly payment.
Welfare reform:
Complaints to LGO
•
Housing Benefit
•
Council tax benefit
Your questions