Compliments and Complaints

At Three Rivers District Council, we aim to provide high quality services to our customers. On occasions, however, things can go wrong. We want to know when our services have gone wrong, so that we can put things right and learn from our mistakes.

The Council considers comments and complaints as opportunities for customers to provide valuable feedback, and for the Council to improve its services.

This procedure outlines the aims of the Council in dealing with complaints and sets out what the customer can expect when making a complaint regarding a Council service.

What is a complaint?

The Council defines a complaint as when

• We fail to provide a service
• We provide a service but it is below a defined standard
• We take too long to do something
• We treat you unfairly
• Our staff or contractors are unhelpful or discourteous

A complaint should not be confused with a request for service. For example - a Council tenant asks the Council to repair a hole in their roof - that is a request for service and not a complaint. If the Council did not carry out the repair, turned up late, did the job poorly, or the contractors were rude, then any of these would be a complaint.

Where issues have a separate mechanism for a right of appeal, then this avenue should be pursued rather than using the complaints procedure. Examples of this are set out below.

Disputes over the issue of parking tickets are dealt with initially by the Parking Shop in Watford, and a right of appeal then exists to the National Parking Adjudication Service.

Disputes over Housing Benefit claims can be dealt with by the Benefits Appeals Service.

Disputes about Council Tax liability can be dealt with by the Hertfordshire Valuation Tribunal.

Aims of the procedure

The aims of our complaints procedure are:

To provide our customers with a well-publicised and easily accessible method of expressing concerns about the way in which the Council provides its services.

• To offer prompt action and a speedy resolution to problems.
• To provide consistency of approach to all complaints throughout the Council's services.
• To record, monitor and analyse complaints in order to improve systematically service performance.
• To enable all Three Rivers employees to understand the importance of a speedy and effective response to complaints from customers.

Making a complaint

A complaint can be made

• in writing (by letter, fax, e-mail or by the website)
• in person

• by telephone

A complaint can be made by anyone who lives, works or travels in the Three Rivers area, and those that receive or are looking for a service from the Council.

We have also published a booklet "Your Guide to making a Complaint" which explains briefly about our procedure, and has a pullout form, which you can also use to register your complaint.

Principles of the Complaints Procedure

The complaints procedure is based on the principle of a three-step process. At all stages of the procedure your complaint will be acknowledged in writing within 3 working days of receipt, and a full written reply will, in most cases, be sent to you within 10 working days.

Occasionally, we may not be able to give you a full response within 10 working days, i.e. for a very complex complaint, in which case we will let you know when you can expect a full reply.

When we acknowledge your complaint we will give you the contact details for the officer who is dealing with it.

Step 1 - Departmental Level

The Head of Service or Manager of the department that you are dealing with will investigate your complaint and reply to you. We would expect to be able to resolve most of our complaints at this stage.

Step 2 - Director Level

If you are unhappy with the response that you have been provided with under Step 1 of the procedure, you should contact the relevant Director who is responsible for the service. He or she will investigate your complaint further and reply to you. The Council's Directors are:

• Director of Community and Environmental Services - Peter Brooker
• Director of Corporate Resources and Governance - David Gardner

Step 3 - Internal Review

If you are unhappy with the Director's response, you may ask the Council's Chief Executive via the Corporate Complaints Officer to review your complaint. If the Chief Executive decides that an internal review of your complaint is needed, then the Corporate Complaints Officer will re-examine your case and the Chief Executive will send you an Internal Review letter to advise you of his decision. If you are still unhappy with the decision after an Internal Review, then you may wish to refer your complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman. The contact details that you will need to know at this stage are shown below:

• Chief Executive - Steven Halls
• Corporate Complaints Officer - Billy Hall

If the Chief Executive forms the view that an internal review is not needed, because it appears that what the Council has done (or failed to do) has not caused you any injustice, or because reaching an agreement with you on a local settlement is unlikely, then you will be informed in writing. If this is the case, you have exhausted the Council's complaints procedure, and you may wish to refer your complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman.

The Local Government Ombudsman 

You can contact the Local Government Ombudsman at any time about your complaint. The Ombudsman is an independent person appointed by the Government to look into complaints against certain authorities. You can complain directly to the Ombudsman, but in most cases before they can investigate a complaint, the Council must have had a chance to put things right first.

A booklet entitled "Complaint about the Council?" which explains the Ombudsman service and how to complain to them is available from the Council's offices. The Ombudsman who investigates complaints about Three Rivers District Council is:

Tony Redmond
Local Government Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP

Tel: 020 7217 4620
Fax: 020 7217 4621

Advice Line: 0845 602 1983

Email: enquiries.london@lgo.org.uk
Website: www.lgo.org.uk

Complaints about Councillors

From 8 May 2008 the responsibility for considering complaints that a member may have breached the Code of Conduct is moving to the standards committees of local authorities.

What this means to you

After 8 May 2008 if you want to complain about the conduct of a member of Three Rivers District Council or a member of one of our parish councils (Abbots Langley, Chorleywood, Croxley Green, Sarratt or Watford Rural Parish) please complete the complaint form below and submit your complaint to:

Chair of the Assessment Sub-Committee
C/O The Monitoring Officer
The Standards Committee
Three Rivers District Council
Three Rivers House
Northway
Rickmansworth
Herts  WD3 1RL

Vexatious and Anonymous Complaints

Where we consider a complaint to be deliberately repetitious or vexatious, we may, at any stage of the complaints procedure, review a complaint and give a decision to this effect in writing. If this is the case, then no further correspondence will be entered into about the matter.

We understand that complaining can be difficult, but if you do not provide us with a contact name or address, then we will be unable to investigate your complaint.

Managing the procedure

The Council's Corporate Complaints Officer has overall responsibility for the procedure on behalf of the Chief Executive. The Corporate Complaints Officer will monitor the level of complaints across the authority and report them to our Management Board on a quarterly basis so that we can identify any trends, learn from our mistakes and improve our performance. Our Management Board consists of the Chief Executive and the four Directors.

Every member of staff is responsible for being aware of what constitutes a complaint, and for taking ownership of the complaint in the first instance. This is to ensure that all complaints are registered with the appropriate Directorate Complaints Officer, and responses are monitored.

Remedies 

The Local Government Ombudsman states that:

"The remedy needs to be appropriate to the injustice, and should as far as possible put the complainant in the position he or she would have been in but for the maladministration."

Whilst we are looking into your complaint, we will always consider any practical solutions that could provide a suitable remedy. It would be helpful, therefore, if you would let us know at the outset, what you think the Council should do to put things right.

Follow Up

After we have completed our investigation into your complaint, we may write to you and ask that you complete a satisfaction form to comment on how we handled your complaint. These satisfaction forms will help us to monitor how we are performing.

General

We understand that making a complaint can sometimes be a frustrating matter, however we would ask that you treat our staff with courtesy and respect when we are processing your complaint. We will not tolerate the verbal or physical harassment of our staff, and anyone using threatening or abusive behaviour during the process, will have their complaint terminated immediately.

Other Help

You can contact your local Councillor at any stage of the complaints procedure. If you are not sure who your local Councillor is then call the Council and we will tell you. We have produced a booklet called "How to contact your Councillor" which is available from all Council Offices.

You can also get free and impartial advice from the Citizen's Advice Bureaux.

Our Contact Details

Three Rivers District Council
Three Rivers House
Northway
Rickmansworth
Herts
WD3 1RL

Telephone - 01923 776611
Fax - 01923 896119
Minicom - 01923 727303
E-Mail - enquiries@threerivers.gov.uk