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Using insight from complaints effectively can support wider learning in councils and help drive service improvement, says a new publication from the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) and the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS).

Using insight from complaints effectively can support wider learning in councils and help drive service improvement, says a new publication from the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) and the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS). Published today, Aiming for the best: Using lessons from complaints to improve public services provides guidance for councils focusing on the role of overview and scrutiny committees.

The guide has been produced jointly by the LGO and CfPS to help develop understanding about gaining customer insight from complaints to improve the planning and delivery of individual services or contribute to corporate learning and improvement. It is aimed at councillors and officers supporting overview and scrutiny committees, by reinforcing the active role they can play in this.

Effective complaint handling goes further than having proper procedures – it also means promoting an organisational culture that is open to challenge, makes the most of opportunities to learn and is willing to change. The guide includes a framework for reviewing insight through complaints that considers cultural, operational and strategic factors. Promoting a positive culture about the value of complaints, exploring the information held about complaints and how it is used, and making use of the business planning or commissioning cycle are among the factors suggested for consideration.

“Complaints provide a valuable source of information for reviewing services and helping to shape them based on the experiences of users,” said Dr Jane Martin, Ombudsman and Acting Chair of the Commission for Local Administration. “They should be viewed as a strategic resource providing rich and diverse perspectives. They can illustrate how well goals and standards are being achieved from the user’s perspective and any unintended consequences of the way policies are implemented or decisions made.”

Jessica Crowe, Executive Director of CfPS, said: “CfPS has identified that complaints and redress for wrongs are part of the web of accountability - they can provide a useful reality check to traditional performance management processes. Overview and scrutiny committees often gather insight from service users through their reviews but they can also challenge the organisational culture to learn from complaints to improve services. Working with case studies from around the country we have identified a framework that OSCs can use to ask questions about cultural, operational and strategic factors relating to complaints handling and how learning is embedded across the organisation. In light of the difficult decisions being taken about the future funding of services, we hope that OSCs will use this latest guide to influence the extent to which these decisions reflect what is important to service users.”

The guide identifies some common enablers and barriers to using insight from complaints effectively. The enablers are:

• creating a culture of learning and improvement
• providing people with lots of ways to give feedback
• leadership in sharing lessons across the organisation
• a coordinated resource that maximises the impact of learning.

The barriers include:

• treating complaints as an opportunity to simply defend practice
• poor communication with citizens and complainants
• silo approach to complaints, no sharing of lessons across the organisation
• little connection between feedback and strategic planning.

The guide includes seven examples of practice from a range of councils that all demonstrate the benefits of using complaints in a positive way. The councils involved have listened to their customers and used the lessons learned to make improvements to their services.

Examples include:

• introducing a new complaints unit to take into account the wider implications of complaints for the service concerned and not simply focusing on resolving individual issues
• publishing a ‘complaints mandate’ with six customer priorities to recognise that complaints are an opportunity to demonstrate commitment to customer values and to learn and improve service provision
• an overview and scrutiny review to help identify priorities for responding to residents’ concerns about waste and cleaning. 

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