South Kesteven District Council to tackle ‘backlog’ of complaints
Boss have warned though it could lead to some getting overlooked
A new plan is being drawn up to deal with a ‘backlog’ of complaints against councillors – but there are concerns that this could lead to some issues being overlooked.
South Kesteven District Council’s (SKDC) monitoring officer Graham Kitchen told members of the authority’s standards committee that the authority had seen a build-up of code of conduct complaints against its members – and he has developed a plan to try to address this.
At a meeting on Thursday (17th September), Mr Kitchen said that where the same complaint had been made by multiple people, the council is planning to only investigate one of the complaints rather than all of them separately in a bid to speed up the process and reduce the backlog.
But some members raised concerns that this could mean that some complaints were not assessed as thoroughly.
Coun Virginia Moran (Independent – Market and West Deeping) said this risks some peoples’ issues being dismissed and added: “Surely, if there are four or five people making exactly the same complaint that gives the complaint more weight?”
Coun Pam Byrd (Independent – Market and West Deeping), who was chairing the meeting, said she didn’t want to ‘lose’ issues with a new complaint process.
Mr Kitchen explained that the council has designed a new online ‘template form’ for people to submit their complaints – with an option to request a hard copy should an individual prefer that over an online form.
He responded to say that every complaint is assessed thoroughly on an individual basis – and, where there were specific concerns, this would be followed up.
He added: “I think the context is paramount. So, every complaint is dealt with on a case by case basis.
“Sometimes, there may be a need to tackle multiple complaints around the same issue.
“But, no, I don’t particularly agree that where there are 50 complainants versus five complainants that necessarily lends more weight.
“Of course, it depends on the nature of the complaint, but you need to look objectively at the facts.”
Coun Ben Green (Reform UK – Isaac Newton) also called on the council to speed up the time it takes to assess complaints to avoid leaving people in limbo for long periods of time.
He said: “I think to date – and certainly over the course of the past year or so – we really have failed to conduct investigations and to resolve complaints in a timely fashion.
“I think the problem that we have is certainly where they’ve been drawn out over a year or so, I think in that case it’s not fair on the complainant, it’s not fair on the defendant.
“I think in a very strong sense the process is at serious risk of almost becoming a punishment in itself.
“I am aware there are other authorities where it is written down as an aspirational point that complaints should ideally be resolved within a certain time frame – be that three months or up to six for example and I don’t think we’ve got anything like that.”
At the meeting, members were also told that the monitoring officer had received a total of 30 new complaints between March 11 and September 9 this year – 16 of these complaints were against district councillors and the other 14 were lodged against parish or town councillors.
Of the 16 district councillor complaints, none progressed beyond the initial investigation.
Six were dismissed by the monitoring officer at the outset, three were withdrawn by the complainant prior to the assessment, three did not progress beyond the initial assessment stage and four are still being processed.
Of the 14 parish or town councillor complaints received during this period, none have progressed beyond the initial investigation stage.
Seven were dismissed by the monitoring officer at the outset, three were withdrawn by the complainant prior to the assessment, two did not progress beyond the initial assessment stage and two are still being processed.