COUNCIL TOPS COMPLAINTS LIST

By TIM HOWARD

Clarence Valley residents logged the most complaints about their council per head of population according to a report from the NSW Ombudsman released last week.

The report recorded the Clarence Valley Council’s complaint rate at 89% in 2021-22, top of the tree in complaints per 100,000 residents.

The Ombudsman received 46 complaints about CVC from its 51,730 population to arrive at the fgure of 89.

Not surprising large metropolitan and central coast councils dominated the line honours, but two regional council’s, Clarence Valley and Mid Coast led on percentages.

NSW Ombudsman Paul Miller’s report recorded 2405 complaints about councils in 2021-22 compared to 5746 complaints about the state government.

Yamba resident Lynne Cairns has been at the pointy end of this process.

At least one of her complaints about council’s alleged failings dealing with a development in Gumnut Rd were directed to the ombudsman.

Mrs Cairns said the ombudsman’s offce advised her that her complaint the development had gone ahead without proper approval was outside its jurisdiction.

“The offcer we dealing with said the have to investigate an allegation that a council had broken a regulation,” Mrs Cairns said.

“We asked why and he told us often it came down to resourcing.”

Mrs Cairns was not surprised to Clarence Valley Council appeared on the ombudsman’s list.

“I am not surprised that CVC made the top 10 in complaints per capita,” she said.

“I talk with a lot of residents in Yamba and there are a lot of unhappy people out there.”

She has made more than one complaint about the council to the ombudsman.

“I forwarded complaints to the NSW Ombudsman about a number of issues,” she said.

“Only one was investigated and that was about council invoking the unreasonable complainant rule prior to providing a warning

“A couple of issues I thought they would investigate was the fact that council failed to respond to a complaint for 97 days and the second was council’s failure to act taking enforcement action for fve months in relation to the ongoing unlawful construction of a DA.”

Mrs Cairns has complained to a two other bodies about the behaviour of the council: the Offce of Local Government and the Information Privacy Commission.

“I found the Ombudsman is really a “toothless tiger” and the OLG is similar.

“I have found the IPC are really thorough and have helped me out a number of times when council refused to provide documents and when document redactions were incorrect.”

But she said the 46 complaints to the Ombudsman do not represent the amount of dissatisfaction in the community with council.

“A lot of residents have seen so much inaction from council, I know many who believe it’s useless making complaints,” Mrs Cairns said.

“In the governance section of the annual report it said between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022 there had only been seven complaints,” she said.

“But in an email to councillors that’s been leaked to us, council says there have been 11 complaints where the Ombudsman has investigated and another 35 where there has been no investigation.”

Mrs Cairns said the email had gone out to councillors promising the matter would be brought to the frst council meeting of the year on February 28.

The report said councils blamed the pandemic, mergers, bad weather and ratepayers who know how to complain for the large number complaints.

Common gripes ranged from standards of customer service to complaint-handling processes, enforcement actions, charges and fees and discretionary council decisions.

The Ombudsman said COVID-19 lockdowns had led to a backlog in council investigations: “There is an ongoing impact of backlogs, including slipping customer service standards, delays in responding to complainants, and delays in responding to our preliminary inquiries.”

Clarence Valley Mayor Ian Tiley was contacted this week for comment on this matter, but he had not replied by the paper’s deadline.