East Riding Council Announces First Year of Complaints Data After Changes

Sunday, 16 November 2025 18:30

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) launched a revised Complaint Handling Code in 2024, which the authority adopted in September of that year.

East Riding Council say fewer complaints have been upheld against it than for comparable local authorities.

No performance concerns were raised by the ombudsman, with some complaints resolved satisfactorily before their involvement.

East Riding Council's Democratic Services Manager is Matthew Turner.

He says complaints overall are down:

"Throughout the year, there was 1,500 nights, four complaints received, but that was a decrease from the previous year. So that's the headline. There was an increase in the children's statutory and social care complaints.

"For every complaint we receive, we clearly communicate to people that if you don't like the answer, they can look to escalate that with one of our executive directors and a follow up response. There was an increase in the number of complaints that were escalated to stage two and that in itself is not necessarily a problem for us because it means that, again, those issues can be looked at in detail by one of our executive directors."

Mr Turner says only a small proportion were escalated to the Ombudsman, but the council say service improvements were introduced across social care, education and planning, ensuring systems, staff training and procedures were strengthened:

"We're trying to learn lessons and put improvements in place throughout the process. The complaints aren't necessarily things that we've found ourselves to be at fault on. The themes tend to be what we would expect to see, and they tend to be consistent throughout the year. We have a lot of frontline services who are interacting with people on a daily basis, and they're the ones where you've got the highest number of complaints.

"But they're also the areas where they're providing the most, you know, frontline services and the high volume transactions with residents. So they receive some negative feedback, but they also receive lots of good feedback. We feel that we're in a positive position still. There is a really good process in place for capturing feedback and the views of the public and they are being listened to."

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