Residents’ feedback and complaints ‘important’ if council is to improve

Newport residents have been urged to provide feedback to the council on its services, even if it takes the shape of a complaint.

Senior officers told a council committee the feedback, whether positive or negative, was crucial if people wanted to see improvements.

A new report has prompted questions about the role local councillors should play in dealing with residents’ concerns, however.

The committee heard the top area for feedback last year was environmental or public protection issues.

Compliments included cleanliness and the standard of services, while negative experiences were “mainly about waste collection”, complaints resolution manager Sarah McCool said.

The report on feedback “highlights how we’ve continued to listen to residents, learn from their experiences and use that feedback to improve services across the council”, she added.

The council had “learned key lessons” including that “residents want clearer, more timely updates” and “staff interactions matter”.

Head of service Tracy McKim told the committee that the council is “trying to do more work to encourage people to complain and to compliment”.

“We don’t see complaints as a bad thing – it’s really important that feedback about services, whether positive or negative, is recorded in a robust way in order to make improvements,” she said.

But following a question from Cllr Ray Mogford, it emerged the local authority does not collect data on how many complaints come from ward representatives.

“I get a lot of complaints – people say they’ve put in requests for services and nothing’s happened,” he explained. “I take on the mantle of pushing through and more often than not manage to get a response. That alleviates the resident complaining, because they’re using the councillor as a vehicle to help resolve issues.”

“Would you encourage councillors to complain?” he asked the officers.

“I would say the correct avenue for that would be for you to advise them to contact our customer complaints department,” Ms McCool responded. “A lot of the time when I’m contacted by councillors, and provide them with information regarding a complaint, I look and actually the customer hasn’t raised it with the complaints department.

“They may have instead sent a request for service into a department, but they haven’t actually raised a formal complaint with ourselves.”

Committee member Don Reed challenged that process, however, suggesting residents may be perplexed if their councillor told them to phone the contact centre rather than ask them directly for help.

Ms McKim accepted the matter was “a fair challenge” but said there was a “balance to be struck on how complicated and how confidential the issue is”.

For residents wishing to make complaints, she advised that “when it’s about a complex personal query, it’s better to do it yourself”.