Jersey government at risk of 'inefficient' complaints handling

The government of Jersey is at risk of "inconsistency and inefficiency" in its complaints handling, an audit reports.

A total of 450 complaints have been made under the government's Customer Feedback Policy since its launch in October 2019.

However, the Audit Office report found there were "no standardised corporate procedures" across departments.

Comptroller Lynn Pamment said "more work" was required by the States.

The Customer Feedback Policy was launched in response to critiques made by the Audit Office in 2018 which highlighted "the time taken to respond to and the lack of evidence of learning and sharing from complaints".

It was also supposed to respond to the Jersey Care Inquiry report published in July 2017 that recommended a new system that could be "easily accessed" and in which children and young people "could have confidence".

The latest report states that while the "tone from the top" emphasised the importance of complaints, a culture of "valuing and learning from complaints is not yet embedded".

Statistics showed that no government department had ensured 100% of its staff completed mandatory online training for the corporate complaints procedure.

While 97% of customer and local services staff had done the training, only 40% of employees from the department for Children, Young People, Education and Skills had done so.

The Jersey Care Inquiry had also recommended that "clear responses are always made to complainants within set timescales".

The audit said that "no information" on the complaints handling procedure was reported "systematically", preventing the government from measuring the "efficiency and effectiveness" of the process.

Ms Pamment said: "The Government has taken important steps to improve complaints handling."

"More work is however required at both corporate and department levels to secure consistent handling of and learning from complaints."