A quarter of all complaints made to Dundee City Council last year were due to poor customer service.
The local authority’s annual report on complaints revealed that 25.1% of the 458 complaints closed in 2015/16 related to customers service.
The second highest proportion of complaints, 18.4% were over failure to meet service standards, followed by failure to provide a service (18%), delays in responding to enquiries and requests (16%) and dissatisfaction with council policy (14%).
The council’s complaints process has two stages: frontline and investigation.
More than four fifths of complaints (83.6) were completed without the need for an investigation and one in four of these (25.3%) were upheld.
Of the complaints that went to an investigation, 18.7% were upheld and 26.7% were partially upheld.
The report, which will go before the council’s scrutiny committee on Wednesday, states the council has a lower rate of complaints than other Scottish local authorities.
It states: “The figure of 458 complaints equates to 3.1 per 1,000 population. This is much lower than the average across Scotland in 2014/15 of 12.2, although there is a very wide variation in the number of complaints recorded by councils.”
The report continues: “Complaints categorises as relating to treatment by or attitude of staff continue to be the highest group.
“Although our overall customer satisfaction survey continues to score highly for the courtesy, friendliness and helpfulness of staff, action is taken in response to complaints and the ‘planned service improvements’ recorded on upheld complaints identify where action has been taken to speak to members of staff.”
The council’s housing department received the highest number complaints (128). This was followed by education (125), corporate services (92) and environment (70).
Thirty-seven people made more than one complaint against the council: 32 made two complaints, four made three complaints and one person lodged six separate complaints.
Although the overall number of complaints remains low, the report states there has been an upward trend in the number of complaints since 2012.
However, it said this rise is likely down to better recording rather than a deterioration in council services.
