Complaints Data 22/23

WMFS OFFICIAL – NEW – FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST – FOI23093 

Ref: FOI/23093 

RE: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 REQUEST 

I am writing to confirm that the West Midlands Fire Service has now completed its search for the information you requested further to your freedom of information request. 

Please find below a summary of our findings. 

Request 

For each of the financial years 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 to date: 

1. How many complaints have your Fire and Rescue Service received? 

a.     Please can this be broken down by who has made the complaint, including by members of the public and by members of your staff. 

b.     Please can this be broken down by who/what the complaint has been made against, including against members of your staff. 

c.     Please can this be broken down by the type of complaint, including sexual harassment/assault. 

d.     Please can you outline the outcome of the complaint, including whether there was an investigation, whether misconduct by your staff was found, and whether a member of your staff was dismissed. 

Reply 

Internal Complaints – this information is exempt under Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as this information is reasonably accessible to the requestor. The information can be found on the WMFS website at the following link: 

https://www.wmfs.net/foi/23011-complaints-by-employees-against-other-employees/

The following data is for External Complaints –  

2022/23 Complaints 137 
Behaviour – 16 
Driving – 10 
Fire Control – 1 
Fire Safety – 10 
Incident and Emergency – 37 
Noise – 1 
Other – 33 
Portfolio/Pension – 13 
Safe and Well – 4 
Training – 2 
Vehicle Accident – 1 
WMFS Employee – 9 

Due to a software change any data prior to 2022 has been deleted, therefore we can only provide data for 2022/2023. 

Information on who has made the complaint and the outcome of the complaint, including whether there was an investigation, whether misconduct by your staff was found, and whether a member of your staff was dismissed* is exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as it would exceed the appropriate time limit allowed. In order to retrieve any further details for the external complaints, we would need to access every complaint file individually which would take approximately 20 minutes per complaint and with 137 complaints total, this would take approximately 45 hours to locate, retrieve and extract the information.  Therefore, If you still wish for us to carry this search I will have to issue you a Fee Notice which will have to be paid in full before we release this information.  

*please note even if we did access each individual complaint, there is no guarantee we would be able to trace the outcome of each complaint 

Please let me know at your earliest convenience if you wish for us to proceed with this request. 

If you have any queries about this Freedom of Information request, please contact us. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.  

For service complaints, issues or comments regarding this request please contact The Public Relations Department, West Midlands Fire Service, 99 Vauxhall Road, Birmingham, B7 4HW 

Further information concerning Freedom of Information requests can be found on the Information Commissioner website at either the following link: https://ico.org.uk/ or at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF.