THE Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has directed more improvements to local councils in the North East in the past year than ever before.

This week, the Ombudsman released its annual review of complaints.

It shows it upheld 56 per cent of complaints in the region, which has decreased from 58 per cent last year, the lowest uphold rate of all the regions.

The data shows the Ombudsman received 103 complaints regarding Northumberland County Council in 2021-2022. 52 per cent were upheld.

In all cases, the Ombudsman was satisfied the Council had successfully implemented their recommendations.

Most complaints were about Planning and Development (27), followed by Education and Services (23) and Adult Social Care (11).

This year's data shows four per cent of all complaints were from the North East. 

While the region has the lowest uphold rate for complaints about Adult Social Care (58 per cent compared with 69 per cent for the rest of England), and Children and Education (60 per cent, compared with 77 per cent average for the other regions), the North East has the highest uphold rate for complaints about Environmental Services (78 per cent compared with 68 per cent average for the other English regions.

Michael King, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said: “One complaint can have immense power to change things for the better, and we’re increasingly focusing on to how we, and the local authorities we investigate, take the learning from those complaints and improve service provision.

“The vast majority of councils agree to the recommendations we make and see them as common-sense ways of providing better services for people in their area. However this can only happen when councils act swiftly when they have committed to do so.

“Unfortunately we are seeing some councils taking longer to make those changes, which put them at risk of making the same mistakes again. In 18 per cent of cases we found compliance was late.

“While I welcome the professional way in which the majority of councils continue to work with us, I would urge those authorities who are having problems to pay close attention to this final, but crucial, step in the complaints process.”

A spokesman for Northumberland County Council said: "Similar to last year, the County Council continues to perform well compared to similar authorities - councils in the North East actually hold the lowest amount of total upheld complaints.

"We complied with all Ombudsman recommendations, and it is evident by the continued increase (7 per cent) in offering satisfactory remedies that the council increasingly recognises the importance of being open and accountable. 

"While overall numbers of complaints are small for a county with a population of around 320,000 people, the council continues to improve its complaint handling; this includes considering a range of different ways to use complaints as a positive learning tool, centralising a team of specialists and investing in a new bespoke case management system."