Hume mayor Joseph Haweil said the council would “do better”, after being named the second most complained about local government by the Victorian Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman’s 2021-22 report reveals Hume received 155 complaints in the last financial year.
Hume recorded the following complaints:
• Complaint handling (33)
• Fines / infringements (24)
• Enforcement action (18)
• Financial (16)
• Correspondence / communications (15)
• Decision making (14)
• Services (14)
• Buildings and facilities (11)
• Planning and development (11)
• Road management (4)
• Animal management (2)
• Conduct (1)
Hume mayor Joseph Haweil said the report from the Ombudsman highlights the work and improvements his council needs to make.
“We very much welcome the process by which people follow if they feel council hasn’t responded in a way they would like,” he said.
“A lot [of complaints] were about complaint handling processes… for me a take out is that I am going to go back to council management to [discuss] optimising our services.”
“We will learn from it and do better.”
Mr Haweil said while he would prefer to see no complaints, the 30 complaints into which the Ombudsman made enquiries were relatively low for a rapidly growing municipality.
“We’re one of the biggest councils…. and if I take that 30 figure into the greater scheme of things it’s a very small number compared to the size of our council and our number of residents.”
In Hume the Ombudsman made enquiries on 19 per cent of the cases, meaning they worked with council to assess and resolve the issue.
Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass said complaints about local councils and prisons had once again topped the lists of the states most complained about agencies.
“[However] complaints about local councils’ complaint handling processes were trending down across the state,” she said.
“Our complainants each have a story to tell about the fairness of official decisions, many of which also impact their human rights.”
Despite the overall trend of complaints decreasing from 626 in the last financial year to 601 this year, Hume’s top issue was complaint handling with 33 complaints made to the Ombudsman.
