WORCESTERSHIRE County Council took more than a year to respond to a complaint about a councillor.
The authority has been told to pay the complainant £500 for the distress caused by the delay.
An investigation by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) found the council had “avoidably delayed” dealing with the complaint.
The LGO got involved after the complainant, named only as Mrs X, said the council had failed to deal with her complaint about a councillor’s conduct.
This is despite her chasing the council for a response.
“Mrs X said the council’s lack of action and transparency was frustrating and stressful and she felt ignored,” said the ombudsman.
“Mrs X wanted the council to apologise, deal with her complaint, and regularly check its website to ensure policies and procedures were available to residents.”
The council did eventually deal with the complaint, but only after “repeated chasers from Mrs X” and after being contacted by the ombudsman.
In the end, it found there had been no breach of the code of conduct by the councillor, who is not named in the LGO’s report.
“The council confirmed it was reviewing its procedure for handling complaints about councillors and planned to provide more information about such complaints on its website,” said the ombudsman.
“It accepted it took over a year to respond to Mrs X’s complaint. The council said the time taken was due to the increasing number of complaints.
“And it was putting in place extra support for the monitoring officer to deal with complaints.
“The council also accepted it had not kept in touch with Mrs X before responding to her complaint.”
The council’s standards and ethics committee also said officers should review the code of conduct.
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The ombudsman told the council to review its complaints-handling procedure and update its website to improve residents’ access to complaint information.
A spokesperson for Worcestershire County Council said: “The council takes all complaints, as well as investigations and findings from the Local Government Ombudsman, very seriously.
“We have apologised to the person who raised the complaint, and paid the compensation as determined by the Ombudsman.
“We have undertaken a review of our arrangements for handling councillor code of conduct complaints, and have updated our website to highlight how people can contact the monitoring officer to raise a complaint in the future.”