Warwick District Council among slowest to deal with complaints

And an investigator described as “shocking” an incident in which an official described bullying of an autistic teenager as ‘low level neighbourhood nuisance’.

In a letter to its chief executive Chris Elliott, Local Government Ombudsman Anne Seex sets out its average response time for to six written complaints was 52 days, one of the longest her office dealt with.

She went into detail about one complaint from a woman whose autistic son had been bullied by neighbours who were council tenants.

Although the council at first responded reasonably, it did not respond to a formal complaint and did not attend a meeting with the mother, Warwickshire Police and Autism West Midlands.

In August 2010 the woman took CCTV recordings of the taunting, but officers did not look at this until late September.

An investigator found one officer’s description of the taunts as ‘low nevel neighbourhood nuisance’ “shocking”, and said officials had failed to recognise harassment or its effects, follow procedures or recognise a breach of its tenancy agreement.

In this case, the Ombudsman did not investigate further as the council accepted it had been at fault and paid £5,000 to the woman, as well as reviewing its procedures and training.

Out of 29 enquiries or complaints, 13 were about housing, with nine dealt with by the ombudsman’s investigators. Benefits accounted for a further seven, with four complaints investigated, while two of five planning complaints were looked into along with one regarding corporate governance.

A district council spokesman said: “The council has recognised that the response times to the enquiries from the Local Government Ombudsman were not acceptable in the last 12 months.

“For this reason the council has already assessed where the problems were and is looking to resolve these swiftly through a reorganisation of responsibilities for the team involved with co-ordinating responses to the Ombudsman.”