Complaints Investigating Officer

Are you passionate about improving services and ensuring residents' voices are heard? We have an exciting opportunity to join Staffordshire County Council's Customer Feedback & Complaints Service in one of two newly established posts designed to strengthen our approach to complaint handling, service improvement and customer experience.

These roles will play a key part in supporting services to respond effectively to customer feedback, complaints and enquiries, ensuring concerns are investigated fairly, lessons are learned, and positive outcomes are delivered for residents.

Working within a supportive and experienced team, you will collaborate with colleagues across the Council, providing advice, guidance and challenge to help services achieve high standards of complaint handling and customer care.

As a Complaints Investigating Officer, you will undertake independent investigations into complex statutory and corporate complaints, ensuring concerns are considered fairly, objectively and in line with relevant legislation, guidance and Council procedures. You will play an important role in supporting good complaint handling, identifying learning opportunities and helping services improve outcomes for children, families and residents.

You will:

• Lead and manage investigations into Stage 2 statutory and corporate complaints, developing clear investigation plans and meeting agreed timescales.
• Gather, review and analyse evidence from a range of sources, including case records, policies, documentation and interviews.
• Produce high-quality investigation reports that present evidence clearly, make balanced findings and provide reasoned conclusions and recommendations.
• Maintain regular communication with complainants and stakeholders, providing updates and ensuring a high standard of customer service throughout the investigation process.
• Support responses to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and other stakeholder enquiries, ensuring information is accurate, timely and compliant with Council requirements.
• Identify opportunities for learning and service improvement arising from complaints and work collaboratively with services to promote positive change.
• Maintain accurate records and case information, ensuring confidentiality and compliance with information governance requirements at all times.
• Recognise and escalate risks, concerns or potential conflicts of interest to maintain the integrity and independence of the complaints process.

The minimum criteria that will be used to shortlist for this role will be:

• Experience of undertaking investigations, complaint investigations, case reviews or comparable fact-finding work involving complex and sensitive matters.
• The ability to gather, analyse and evaluate evidence from a range of sources to reach balanced and evidence-based conclusions.
• Excellent written communication and report-writing skills, including the ability to present complex information, findings and recommendations clearly and professionally.
• The ability to manage multiple complex cases and competing priorities independently, while maintaining accurate records, attention to detail and required timescales.
• The ability to exercise sound judgement, maintain impartiality, confidentiality and professional integrity, and build effective relationships with complainants and stakeholders.

Our Recruitment Process: We anonymise applications during shortlisting to ensure only relevant information is considered. Please complete your application fully, especially the supporting statement, to highlight what you’ll bring to the role.

Please note: The minimum criteria in the ideal candidate section detailed above will be used if you are applying under one of our Interview Guarantee Schemes detailed below.

We are no ordinary county council:

Our Values:

The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.

Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:

We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.

We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too.

Our benefits:

We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance.

In addition to your salary, as a member of staff, you will have access to Our rewards and benefits - Careers at Staffordshire

Our recruitment process:

As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as your application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

As you’ll know safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children and young people/vulnerable adults is important to us and that’s why this position is subject to a criminal record check from the Disclosure and Barring Service. If applicable you should disclose details of unspent and unfiltered spent reprimands, formal warnings, cautions and convictions in your application form.