Decision Report 201700449

Summary

Mrs C complained that the council had failed to implement the recommendations of a social work complaints review committee (CRC). The CRC had been held and, despite a statutory timeframe of 42 days within which the recommendations should have been considered, the council did not consider the recommendations for six months. In terms of the complaints handling procedure in place at the time, the recommendations had to be reported for consideration by a council committee. The council's position was that this had been hampered by the intervening local elections and recess period, but we considered the delay to be unreasonable. We also considered that the council should have kept Mrs C updated with an explanation for the delay and advice as to likely timescales for implementing the recommendations. We upheld Mrs C's complaint.

Recommendations

What we asked the organisation to do in this case:

• Apologise to Mrs C for not keeping her updated with regards to likely timescales and for not providing an explanantion for the delay in implementing the recommendations.

What we said should change to put things right in future:

• The council should be mindful of the importance of keeping complainants updated.

We have asked the organisation to provide us with evidence that they have implemented the recommendations we have made on this case by the deadline we set.