Complaints Officer
Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest
Salary: PO1 £38,364 - £40,833
Contract Type: Full-time, fixed-term
Working hours per week: 36 hours per week in business hours.
Application Deadline: 5th August 2024
Proposed Interview Date: to be confirmed
Reference: 1342
About Us:
Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.
We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.
London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London's Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.
The Council's preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk so we can arrange an alternative application method.
About the role:
Due to a team member moving to a secondment opportunity for 6 months we are looking for someone to support Stage 2 complaint investigations. This is a fast pace role where meeting deadlines in line with the Ombudsman code is key. You will have an eye for detail, with an enquiring mind, be highly organised and solution focused. This is a very exciting time to join the complaints team as we are introducing a new complaints system at the end of the year, your input will be required to ensure it is robust and provides an end to end solution, reducing duplication across the organisation and providing a single information point for all complaint matters. Experience in complaint handling is desirable but not essential.
If you are applying for a secondment opportunity, please ensure you speak with your line manager first and gain agreement from them.
>> Click here to download the Role Profile <<
Key Responsibilities:
To undertake stage two complaint investigations across a diverse range of Council services in line with agreed procedures, standards and timescales and provide a high quality and detailed response to the complainant on behalf of the Chief Executive.
To provide the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) and Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) with a swift and comprehensive response to all their enquiries.
To work with services across the Council to ensure they take appropriate corrective action following each upheld complaint and Ombudsman enquiry.
To compile and analyse information and data about complaints, including type, number, trends and learning, and ensure this information is available for performance monitoring and service improvement purposes.
To report on any areas of significant or persistent service failure identified through complaint investigations and analysis, review policies, procedures and practices that may be contributing to this failure, recommend actions to deliver improvement, and monitor progress.
To ensure that information about how to complain is clear and simple, and easily available to residents and service users.
To provide a face to face complaints service when necessary to any residents and service users attending the Town Hall to make a complaint in person.
To provide complainants with a personalised service that is sensitive to the nature of their complaint, particularly in circumstances when the complaint investigation and decision may have a significant impact on the complainant's well-being.
Qualifications and Requirements:
Knowledge, Skills and Experience
(The following three areas represent a summary of the essential elements of the person specification)
- Good knowledge and understanding of legislation, statutory guidance, policies and policy developments relevant to the post holder's area of responsibility;
- Good knowledge and understanding of confidentiality and Data Protection principles;
- Excellent investigative skills and ability to research various issues across a range of different subjects in relation to complaint investigations;
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with a wide range of audiences;
- Ability to deal sensitively with complex and contentious matters;
- Ability to respond positively to change and support the implementation of new ways of working;
- Ability to prioritise, manage a high workload and meet deadlines;
- Experience of undertaking high quality complaint investigations within a local authority, other public sector organisations, regulatory body or similar;
- Experience of liaising with and responding to the requirements of a regulatory body, for example, the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman, the Housing Ombudsman Service, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and similar;
- Experience of using information and feedback to help make improvements in service delivery;
- Experience of writing high quality reports;
- Experience of supporting the delivery of key programmes and projects
- Experience of recording and reporting complex information, using various information technologies.
• Educated to degree standard or equivalent
• Excellent standard of written and verbal English
Terms and conditions:
The below terms and conditions apply to this role:
Satisfactory employment references
Satisfactory declaration of interest;
As a public authority, we must ensure that members of staff in public-facing roles are able to speak fluent English. This means that they must have a command of spoken English, with confidence and accuracy, sufficient for the effective performance of their role. This requirement does not refer to any particular English language qualifications, regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations. It does not require staff to speak only in English.
How to Apply:
Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications online by pressing the 'Apply' button below. This includes a supporting statement that outlines to us how your skills and experience make you a good candidate for this vacancy.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.
Equal Opportunity Employer:
Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value.
To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy.
We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.
For more information on the benefits of working for the Council, please visit https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/jobs-and-training/find-jobs-and-other-opportunities/working-us.
Contact Information:
If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Annie Neale, Complaints manager at annie.neale@walthamforest.gov.uk
If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post, please contact our Recruitment Team via email at recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk.
Click here for further information on the Human Resources recruitment privacy notice.