NEW figures from the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales show that complaints about councils in Wales are higher now than before the pandemic.

The fresh data shows that almost 12,000 complaints were received by Welsh local authorities in the first three quarters of 2021/22 - the equivalent of just over five complaints for every 1,000 residents of Wales.

In Ceredigion, 31 complaints were received about the county council between April and December 2021, well below the Wales average at 1.63 per 1,000 people.

For Gwynedd council, a round 100 complaints were made - the equivalent of 3.63 complaints for every 1,000 residents.

Powys council received 109 complaints, averaging out at 3.28 per 1,000 residents.

The new data shows that around 73 per cent of complaints which were closed in the third quarter of the year were done so within the expected target of 20 working days.

This performance is lower than in the previous two quarters of the year and “probably represents the difficulties experienced by all public bodies over the winter period,” the report said.

Local Authorities in Wales upheld about 40 per cent of the complaints they closed in quarter three, a figure which “has remained consistently high throughout the year”, the Ombudsman report said.

Almost 300 complaints relating to local authorities were referred to the Ombudsman - nine in Ceredigion, 10 in Gwynedd, and 11 in Powys.

Nick Bennett, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales said: “This latest data publication shows that complaint volumes are now higher than before the pandemic and, with nine per cent of complaints being referred to our office, shows that caseloads are high everywhere.

“We’re committed to drive improvement in public services through better complaint handling – and we’ve now provided more than 200 training sessions to public bodies in Wales via our Complaints Standards Authority.

“Hopefully this will mean more complainants receive a satisfactory response to their complaints early in the process.“

Matthew Harris, Public Service Ombudsman for Wales’s Head of Complaints Standards, said: “We’re pleased to publish information on complaints handled by Local Authorities again, and we’ll look forward to seeing what the full year’s data looks like later in the year.

“We’ll also look forward to bringing other parts of the Welsh Public Service, like Health Boards and Housing Associations, into our data publication in the near future.”

The newly published statistics monitor complaints received by local authorities for the proportion of the financial year April to December 2021.