People's Champion and the new council complaints procedure explained

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 8th Feb 2008

Councillor Keith Swift gives us an update on the 'People's Champion' and the new council complaints procedure.

Councillor Swift Cabinet Member who is the Lead Member for the People's Champion Team said: "I am really pleased with the work that The People's Champion, Carolyn Phipps, and her team have done since they all came into post at the end of September.

"Carolyn and her team came to a Council which did not have a corporate complaints policy. Each of our services dealt with complaints in a different manner and the level of customer service, in some cases, was not what we would expect.

"The People's Champion Team has worked hard, and with speed, to put together a policy which embraces the best in customer service for the people of the Borough which will be used by every service in the Council.

"In the next months the People's Champion Team are training members of every council service to ensure that the people of the Borough get a first class service when registering a complaint.

"We are also working on a state-of-the-art electronic complaints logging system which will track complaints through to resolution, which we can refer to, to identify trends and remedies.

"The new policy is a three stage process:

"Firstly, a complaint will be logged on the new electronic system, and investigated by the newly trained staff in each department.

"Secondly, there is a right of appeal by the complainant, again dealt with by the service, but at a higher level.

"Thirdly if the complainant is still not satisfied with the response, the People's Champion team will, independently, investigate the complaint and response from the service.

"It is important to remember that the People's Champion Team are independent and can only act if a complaint is not resolved by the service in the first instance.

"The People's Champion has direct access to the Executive Leadership Team of the Council to make recommendations to change practices and policy, to improve the way Rochdale Council provides services to the people of the Borough.