Residents raised a total of 59 complaints about Herefordshire Council to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman last year.
Education and children’s services was the department most complained about with a total of 18 enquiries, while planning, highways and adult care services received 12, 10 and 9 each.
Other services such as benefits and tax, corporate, environment and housing received four, three, two and a single complaint respectively.
Michael King, local government ombudsman, wrote to council chief executive Alistair Neill about the enquiries.
“I would stress that the volume of complaints does not, in itself, indicate the quality of the council’s performance,” he said in the annual review letter for 2018.
“High volumes of complaints can be a sign of an open, learning organisation, as well as sometimes being an early warning of wider problems.
“Low complaint volumes can be a worrying sign that an organisation is not alive to user feedback, rather than always being an indicator that all is well.
“So, I would encourage you to use these figures as the start of a conversation, rather than an absolute measure of corporate health.”
The ombudsman upheld six of the 14 complaints it conducted a detailed investigation into making the uphold rate 43%.
Three of these complaints were remedied by the ombudsman and one was dealt with satisfactorily by the council before the ombudsman’s involvement.
Mr King added: “We share the issues we see in our investigations to help councils learn from the issues others have experienced and avoid making the same mistakes.”
The ombudsman also delivers a training programme supporting local authorities and independent care providers to help improve local complaint handling.
Council staff received a children’s social care complaint handling course during 2017-2018.
Natalia Silver, Assistant Director Communities, Herefordshire Council said: “Herefordshire Council performs well amongst comparable local authorities.
“The council is committed to resolving complaints promptly and working with Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to learn from experiences where individuals have not received a satisfactory resolution.
“This is reflected in the relatively few complaints that are escalated to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman which are then not upheld.”
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