An Angus primary school teacher was forced to make a personal apology to a pupil after subjecting them to “inappropriate, humiliating and threatening” comments in the school.
The parties also underwent mediation and the apology followed a full inquiry mounted as part of Angus Council’s complaints procedure, which generated more than 250 complaints last year.
The vast majority of those more than eight in 10 were closed at the frontline resolution stage, with fewer than 100 complaints upheld.
Waste collection, planning and a council employee’s attitude towards a council tenant also generated complaints that were either fully or partially upheld.
The exact details of the primary school issue were not revealed in a report to Angus scrutiny and audit councillors that set out the complete complaint statistics for 2014/15 and the stages at which they were resolved.
Council chief executive Richard Stiff acknowledged that the council could “do a lot more” to learn from complaints but he said the “significant” number of complaints being upheld was an indication of the authority’s willingness to admit its shortcomings.
Angus has a two-stage complaints process, the first being frontline handling of the issue.
If the matter cannot be resolved at that point it is passed on for investigation within the council by an officer independent from the area of complaint.
The 2014/15 data revealed that, of the stage two complaints, 13% (six) were upheld, 56.5% (26) were not upheld and 30.4% (14) were partially upheld.
The chief executive said: “We are upholding a significant number of complaints and what I take from that is that as an organisation we are willing to say ‘yes, we got it wrong and we will put it right’.
“It’s an indication of a relatively healthy organisation to say that we got it wrong.
“We are progressively moving to the point where we absolutely see complaints not as a pain in the neck but something that can help us improve.”
Councillor Ronnie Proctor said: “There are people that have concerns and the very fact that those have been registered, listened to and taken up is a very good thing.
“I think people realise that the council is a listening council and this is a marker for the future.”
Councillor Jeanette Gaul said: “It’s good that the council is paying attention to those that put in their complaints but a lot of good work is also being done and I don’t think we recognise the compliments that are coming in.
“I think for staff morale it is good that we recognise the compliments as well as complaints.”