Escalation
If the customer continues to behave or act in a way which we consider unreasonable, a manager can choose to escalate the incident to the Head of Legal Services and the Chief Strategy Officer, who will liaise with key officers (in Customer Services, Information Governance, and the relevant Head of Service) to decide what action to recommend.
There are different options which the Head of Legal Services and Chief Strategy Officer can apply, to ensure that each case will have a proportionate and appropriate response to address the issues that the customer brings.
Examples of the options are:
- limit telephone calls to specific days or times
- place time limits on telephone conversations and personal contact
- limit contact to writing or email only - this might be where the customer has subjected our staff to abusive or excessive telephone calls
- limit our written contact with the customer to postal methods only - this might be where the customer has submitted excessive emails on the same or similar subjects
- limit to only having one line of response to multiple lines of communication
- limit contact to a specific named person or people or service / team
- putting in place auto-divert restrictions so correspondence into the organisation is only received by a named contact
- stop registering, processing, or discussing further correspondence about the same matter - any further correspondence on the same matter that has already been addressed, or that does not set out any substantially new issues, would be read and filed, but we will not acknowledge or respond to the customer - this action may apply to one specific service or team or where we consider it appropriate, we may extend this to cover all the council
- requiring any personal contact to take place in the presence of a witness
- blocking the customer from leaving messages or comments on the council’s social media
- refusing public participation at public meetings and instead inviting the customer to provide a written response in advance - this will be read out during the meeting
- report any threatening or abusive comments to the police
This is not an exhaustive list, and we reserve the right to take other specific actions to address particular behaviours. It is important that the circumstances of each complaint and complainant are taken into account. There is no universal measure for when actions may be classed as unreasonable.
Any action we take in response to unreasonable behaviour, we will record and will be subject to regular review. Responses should be open and proportionate.
The council reserves the right to pass any correspondence to our legal representatives which may result in legal action. Customers will be made aware if this is likely to become, or becomes necessary.
Hate crime
Where material, comments or actions are grossly offensive or threatening and may be construed as an offence under the Public Order Act 1986, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 or the Malicious Communications Act 1988, the council may involve the police or start proceedings.
Any behaviour which is aggressive and/or derogatory and related to disability, perceived gender, religion, belief, race, sex, age or gender can be immediately reported as a hate crime to:
report-it.org.uk/your_police_force or york.gov.uk/HateCrime.
The council will always support its employees who have experienced a hate crime.
Safeguarding staff
At times, council employees will interact with customers who are known to the council as presenting a risk. When visiting customers at their own homes, or considering whether to escalate issues, employees are advised to check the B-Safe system which records these issues.
Also see
Claire Foale
Chief Strategy Officer