Issue - meetings

To submit the report of the Monitoring Officer.

1.    To accept the proposed changes to the Local Resolution Procedure to reflect the arrival of the new statutory duties for Group Leaders and recommend to the Full Council.

2.    Support the Monitoring Officer's intention to require the use of a complaints form as part of the Local Resolution system, as contained in Appendix 2 of the report, with the addition that the form requires the complainant to state which output that he/she seeks as a result of the complaint.

Submitted – the report of the Monitoring Officer inviting the committee:-

·         To accept the proposed changes to the Local Resolution Procedure (as highlighted in Appendix 1 of the report) to reflect the introduction of the new statutory duties for Group Leaders and recommend them to the Full Council.

·         To support his proposal to require the use of a complaints form (Appendix 2) as part of the Local Resolution procedure.

Observations / questions were invited from the members.

It was noted that a decision had to be made at some point on whether a complaint was suitable for a local resolution, or whether it should be referred to the Ombudsman, and it was enquired whether this step should have been included somewhere in the process.

It was enquired whether it was Cyngor Gwynedd's policy that every complaint by the public must be referred to the Ombudsman, because it could be argued that it would be better to deal with some minor low level public complaints through the Local Resolution Procedure. In response, the Monitoring Officer noted:-

·         Although data could not be given on this, there was a general tendency to send public complaints to the Ombudsman for two reasons, i.e it was not always easy to identify the nature of the concern and that resources were needed to investigate those complaints.

·         The current arrangement had not been designed to deal with public complaints, and although there would be qualities of going down that road, a process that worked and the public felt confident about would have to be ensured.

It was recommended that complaints forms should ask the complainant to state which output he/she was seeking as a result of the complaint. It may be that the complainant was only seeking an apology, or hoping that those they were complaining about would see the situation from his/her perspective. It was believed that asking the question would be beneficial in terms of deciding how to deal with complaints as it would highlight that not every public complaint was heavy on resources and it was possible to have a quick and simple solution for members of the public in some cases.

It was noted that paragraph 3 of Appendix 1 of the report's English version had errors and the Monitoring Officer confirmed that he would check it and make amendments to ensure that the wording read correctly.

RESOLVED

1.         To accept the proposed changes to the Local Resolution Procedure to reflect the introduction of the new statutory duties for Group Leaders and recommend to the Full Council.

2.         To support the Monitoring Officer's intention to require the use of a complaints form as part of the Local Resolution procedure, as contained in Appendix 2 of the report, with the addition that the form requires the complainant to state which output that he/she seeks as a result of the complaint.