Council criticised over slow complaints response

The Local Government Ombudsman has now called for York Council to overhaul its procedures to ensure that it can hit a target of 28 days for inquiries about official complaints to be dealt with.

An annual report published yesterday by ombudsman Jane Martin revealed that York Council is now taking an average of 47.6 days to respond to formal inquiries about complaints, compared to 35.3 days during the 2008-9 financial year.

Dr Martin confirmed that the problems had been "exacerbated" by the time taken to respond to two complaints about adult care services.

She added: "In one the council took 140 days to respond and in the other 63 days.

"These figures are clearly unacceptable and I hope the council will take immediate steps to improve its performance in this area."

Dr Martin stressed that if the two cases about adult care services are discounted, the average is brought down to 29.7 days which is only marginally outside the target time set by the Local Government Ombudsman.

She also welcomed improvements which had been made in responding to planning and building control complaints, which took an average of 17.5 days.

The council received 42 complaints and inquiries during the last financial year, compared to 57 during the previous 12 months.

A York Council spokeswoman said: "We welcome the publication of the (report] and will look carefully at how we can use its findings to improve our services.

"We recognise that we need to improve our response rate to ombudsman inquiries and intend to look in depth at our handling of the two cases involved."