Complaints but no reports!

The Local Government Ombudsman has published an annual review of complaints about Christchurch Borough Council in which he said he was not required to issue any reports against the council during 2008/09.

A total of 17 complaints and enquiries were received during the year. Two were treated as premature and in four other cases advice was given. The remaining 11 were forwarded to the investigative team.

The ombudsman decided nine cases. In five of those, he found no maladministration, in two, he decided not to investigate and in one further case, he took the view that the matters were outside of his jurisdiction. In the final case a local settlement was agreed between the complainant and the council, so it did not have to proceed.

Michael Turvey, Chief Executive of Christchurch Council, said: “We are delighted that the ombudsman did not have to issue any reports against us last year. We take all complaints we receive seriously and try our utmost to deal with them in-house to the best of our ability.

“However, we realise that there is always more that we could learn so we were pleased that some of our staff received training on effective complaint handling from members of the Ombudsman’s office last year.”