{"id":67827,"date":"2025-11-19T09:43:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T09:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/?p=67827"},"modified":"2025-11-27T16:24:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T16:24:35","slug":"rise-in-complaints-made-to-council-watchdog-last-year-but-improvements-are-being-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/rise-in-complaints-made-to-council-watchdog-last-year-but-improvements-are-being-made\/","title":{"rendered":"Rise in complaints made to council watchdog last year, but improvements are being made"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The number of complaints made about us that were referred to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) increased last year (2024-2025) to 165 compared to 151 the previous year.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, during that period payouts to resolve complaints fell by a quarter with more complaints being resolved earlier and by mediation, and improvements are currently being made to the way complaints are handled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year\u2019s figures were presented to members of the Standards Committee earlier this week (Monday, November 17).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillors heard that the LGSCO upheld 85 per cent of complaints, slightly below the previous year\u2019s 89 per cent but still above the average for comparable authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adjusted for population, Devon recorded 8.3 upheld complaints per 100,000 residents – higher than the national average of 5.3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report shows that education and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) services continue to be the main reasons for complaints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Payments to complainants totalled around \u00a354,000, down from \u00a372,000 in 2023\u201324, with significant reductions in categories such as \u2018Loss of Education, down 66 per cent, and \u2018Delay in Issuing Education Health Care Plans\u2019 down 90 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also detailed how we had fully complied with all Ombudsman recommendations, which include staff training, policy reviews, and measures to strengthen SEND services and the work underway to improve complaint response times.<\/p>\n\n\n

\r\n\t
\r\n

Councillor Simon Clist, Cabinet Member for Assets and Resources said: <\/p><\/div>\r\n \t\t

\u201cI recognise the challenges reflected in this report, particularly in SEND services, which continue to generate the highest number of complaints.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are committed to learning from these findings for complaints last year and ensuring that residents receive timely, fair, and high-quality services.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\t
\r\n\t\t\"Councillor\r\n
\r\n Councillor Simon Clist, Cabinet Member for Assets and Resources<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n <\/figure>\r\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n <\/div>\n\n\n

The full report<\/a> is available on the Council\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":859,"featured_media":67846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[106,7,34,24,10,2175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-social-care","category-children-families-and-education","category-community","category-dcc-homepage","category-democracy","category-send-category"],"acf":[],"featured_image":{"ID":67846,"title":"xr:d:DAFP98JVryc:335,j:6001471434018597331,t:24041508","alt":"A customer service worker on the telephone to a customer","description":"","caption":"xr:d:DAFP98JVryc:335,j:6001471434018597331,t:24041508","url":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page.jpg","width":1200,"height":675,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-400x270.jpg","thumbnail_width":400,"thumbnail_height":270,"medium":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-600x338.jpg","medium_width":600,"medium_height":338,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-768x432.jpg","medium_large_width":768,"medium_large_height":432,"large":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-800x450.jpg","large_width":800,"large_height":450,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page.jpg","1536x1536_width":1200,"1536x1536_height":675,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page.jpg","2048x2048_width":1200,"2048x2048_height":675,"thumbnail_featured":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-770x450.jpg","thumbnail_featured_width":770,"thumbnail_featured_height":450,"thumbnail_sidebar":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-200x135.jpg","thumbnail_sidebar_width":200,"thumbnail_sidebar_height":135,"banner-block":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-440x440.jpg","banner-block_width":440,"banner-block_height":440,"small-banner":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-640x360.jpg","small-banner_width":640,"small-banner_height":360,"medium-banner":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-1024x576.jpg","medium-banner_width":1024,"medium-banner_height":576,"small-thumb":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-640x480.jpg","small-thumb_width":640,"small-thumb_height":480,"medium-thumb":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-320x240.jpg","medium-thumb_width":320,"medium-thumb_height":240,"large-thumb":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-420x315.jpg","large-thumb_width":420,"large-thumb_height":315,"slideshow-preview":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-300x200.jpg","slideshow-preview_width":300,"slideshow-preview_height":200,"slideshow":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2025\/11\/Customer-Service-Centre-news-page-800x533.jpg","slideshow_width":800,"slideshow_height":533}},"category_priority":false,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2027-11-19 09:39:22","action":"delete","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/859"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67883,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67827\/revisions\/67883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}