Nationally, councils in England are 'getting it wrong too often' when it comes to waste collection complaints, says the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
Its new report shows the Ombudsman upheld 81 per cent of its complaint investigations into council waste and recycling services last year. This has shot up from 59 per cent the year before, with outsourcing blamed, in part, for this sharp rise.
However, in Cheshire East zero complaints were referred to the Ombudsmen about its waste collection service, which has a 90 per cent approval rating with local residents.
Councillor Don Stockton, cabinet member for waste and environmental services, said he is proud to 'lift the lid' on this real success story for Cheshire East.
Cllr Stockton said: "Cheshire East is proving its commitment to delivering excellent services that are both responsive to people's needs and provide value for money for residents. This is also about strong leadership, accountability and putting things right quickly if they go wrong – which is what we strive to do.
"When things go wrong, it's how councils put them right that really matters. We know how vital this is – and that's why we listen to residents and greatly value their feedback."
Chairman of Ansa, Councillor John Hammond, said: "With many councils outsourcing waste services, one of the common issues the Ombudsman has identified is insufficient council oversight.
"That is not the case here at Cheshire East, where our residents benefit from a highly-rated service run by the council's own innovative arms-length company Ansa – which is wholly-owned by the authority and overseen by elected members.
"This enables the authority to get the benefit of both worlds: retaining the expertise of experienced and highly-dedicated staff – but also the freedom to operate in a more innovative and commercially-minded way to deliver high-quality services and real value for money for local people."
Comments
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Unfortunately cannot say the same for the disaster that is the planning cohort.
Those of a negative mind clearly find that a problem hence switching to a different service and have chosen Planning and complaints to the ombudsman.
To be specific there were 45 complaints to the ombudsman on Planning. What needs to be added is that 44 were not upheld.
But where the opposite of good service is offered elsewhere by the council then that department (s) must be seriously questioned for their poor service, in this case planning. Ut is not a matter of the number of complaints raised with the Ombudsman but the total disregard of residents concerns by the dismissive responses to the public's raised concerns by the planners. This is exampled by a CE councillor's concern over some 300 plus responses against a particular planning application - the chief planning officer,Adrian Fisher, was asked why he was not taking these responses into consideration? His reply was straight forward, they are "irrelevant" he said.
This is a problem that persists across various CEC departments; I would suggest it is for our majority party's elected members to start looking into the poor service & ethos that some promote as "outstanding".
But to finish on a high note, well done to our refuse service. A great shame some other departments find it "irrelevant" to attain a similar service.
The ANSA facility at Middlewhich was, so I read elsewhere, due to be operational around March/April 2017 but is still not finished. I also read that on 27th July CEC voted to give ANSA an additional £2.4 Million (of our money) to get the building work finished; this being outside the original budget.
I'm hoping that I've got some of this wrong, after all one can't believe everything one reads on the internet or in the newspapers; if so, perhaps a Councillor with an interest in this subject could possibly put me right?
Now was this largess of £2.4 million of our hard earned brass a loan or a gift by CEC to Ansa?
Cllr Rachel Bailey, CEC leader, said: “As responsible shareholders, we have made it clear that we do not expect a commercial return on our investment...." Oh dear!
What does that mean Rachel? Is it a gift or a loan? You need to so some explaining to your
voters.