Authority among fewest complaints

The authority had nine incidents reported to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) in 2015/16, however, none of those were upheld, according to the LGO’s annual review.

Five complaints were closed after initial enquiries by the Ombudsman’s office and the council scored a 100 per cent compliance rate.

Two were referred back for local resolution and two were not upheld.

The results mean the borough council scored equal tenth out of 132 in a league table of total complaints – there are 364 authorities but many tallied in the same position. There were 15 other councils with the same result as Boston.

Council leader Coun Peter Bedford, said: “While it is gratifying to receive such a positive outcome in the Local Government Ombudsman’s annual report, we do value all the complaints we receive as opportunities for improvement.”

Nationally, the LGO received 19,702 complaints and inquiries about local authorities up to March 31, 2016 – a similar level to the previous year.

It made 3,529 recommendations to remedy injustice in total. It upheld 51 per cent of detailed investigations in 2015/16 – up from 46 per cent the previous year.

These include 633 recommendations to prevent injustice for the wider public, and 255 investigations where the LGO agreed the local authority had satisfactorily remedied the injustice before the LGO became involved.