Complaints up, compliments down at Powys Social Services

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

The number of complaints received by Powys council’s Social Services department has jumped up while the number of compliments dropped last year.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Health and Care Scrutiny Committee this week, councillors received the annual Social Services complaints report for 2025/2026.

The report shows that 234 complaints were received, which compares to 205 in 2024/2025.

The breakdown shows that complaints to Children’s Services rose from 109 in 2024/2025 to 147.

But complains to Adult Services actually dropped from 96 in 2024/2025 to 87.

Director of Social Services Nina Davies stressed that no cases had been referred to the council from Public Service Ombudsman for Wales for reinvestigation.

Mrs Davies said: “Which is positive and reflects the overall robustness and fairness of our overall complaints handling process.”

She added that Social Services are “learning” from the complaints received and this is seeing action in policy changes, clearer recording, and improvements in: “commissioning oversight and practice expectation across both Adults and Children’s Social Services”.

Mrs Davies said: “Alongside this we continue to receive a number of compliments from service users and professionals – which are always much appreciated.”

But the number of compliments has fallen from 249 in 2024/2025 to 209 in 2025/2026.

Mrs Davies said: “The report clearly shows there are areas for improvement, and the most important part is timeliness, response times of stage one and stage two are not meeting the regulatory timescales, and overall performance remains below where we want it to be.

“We have seen an increase in complaint complexity with many complaints involving multiple issues and services which makes them harder and slower to respond.”

She pointed out that the main causes for complaints were: communication issues, failures to carry out agreed actions or service, delivery and financial matters around care contributions direct payments and “perceived” lack of support or disagreements with professional decisions.

Mrs Davies said: “It has been a difficult year for the feedback team; we have had significant staffing changes and absences.”

Committee Chair, Cllr Amanda Jenner (Conservative – Trewern and Trelystan), believed that a “drive” by the council to encourage people to compliment them had inflated past figures and “wasn’t going to persist”.

Cllr Jenner asked for more of a “flavour” of the type of complaints received under the communications headline.

She said: “It would be helpful to see how you’re digging down into the detail of that and how you’re trying to address that.”

Head of Adult Services, Sharon Frewin, said: “We’ve improved information on the website and have better information to sign post people to.

“We’ve produced scripts for people around key areas and leaflets around charging.”

Policy and Customer Care Manager, Stephen Holcroft, added that an issue people have is not knowing “what happens next” following an “intervention”.

Mr Holcroft said that a “piece of work” is being conducted on this issue with the Children’s Services Department.

Mrs Frewin stressed that these complaints on communication were around “data and information sharing” and not “inappropriate or offensive language” by staff.

Mrs Davies added: “We have an action plan in place and has been for a number of months that is being supported by senior management and is focusing on stabilising the complaints service.”

The committee noted the report and Cllr Jenner requested that some members are allowed to meet the complaints team during the next year.