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Cambridge City Council

How did we do? Achievements and challenges highlighted in annual reports

7 July 2023

CAMBRIDGE City Council has published two annual reports which give residents a clear update on how it performed during 2022-23. 

Councillors discussed the reports at Strategy and Resources Scrutiny Committee this week and the council’s Annual Report [PDF, 3.5MB] has now been published, providing an update on progress against its Corporate Plan. 

The Corporate Plan sets out what the council is working to achieve for residents, businesses and visitors over the years 2022-27. The Annual Report details progress in the last year.

The Annual Report shows that 2022-23 was another challenging year when the country was still emerging from the difficulties brought about by the pandemic. The consequences of war in Ukraine, which prompted not only the arrival of families seeking refuge from the war, but also contributed to rising fuel costs and the inflation/cost of living crisis, also posed challenges.

The council responded to these pressures, as well as the rising demand for services of a rapidly growing city. 

The Annual Report highlights how the council continued to take action on its priorities, including:

More detail on all of these points is included in the report and a number of key figures are highlighted in an infographic on our website [PDF, 0.6MB].

At the same time, the council’s Annual Complaints and Feedback Report [PDF, 1.5MB] details how many complaints the council received during 2022-23, the cause of those complaints and what action has been taken. 

Overall, the number of complaints in 2022-23 was 886, which is a decrease of 87 cases (9%) from the previous year’s total of 973.

Some 288 (33%) of all complaints received by the council were for the Housing Maintenance and Assets service. This is an increase from 202 complaints in the previous year. The main contributor to this was when the service moved to a new gas maintenance contractor, and there were initial resourcing issues with the contractor which resulted in an influx of cases.

Other services saw the number of complaints received decrease from last year. Complaints for Waste services reduced from 207 in 2021-22, to 135 in 2022-23. Commercial Services also saw a 50% reduction in complaints from 84 to 42.

The report also includes other feedback and compliments. In 2022-23 the council recorded 82 compliments across all services on its complaints and feedback tracker, which is a decrease of 49 (35%) compared to 2021-22.

However, some frontline services found that compliments were received directly to operatives or officers from residents.

Cllr Mike Davey, Leader of the Council said “I’m pleased to publish these reports so that everyone can see what we are delivering with their Council Tax and the other income we receive, and how we are doing. 

“Council staff have worked incredibly hard over the last year to deliver high quality services to residents, tenants, businesses and everyone in the city, often in challenging circumstances. 

“All councillors are grateful to staff for those efforts and the achievements recorded in the Annual Report. 

“I’m particularly pleased to see how much we were able to do to support residents in the greatest need through the cost of living crisis over the last year, and how we were able to step up and support refugees from Ukraine and their host families, as well as others in housing need.

“We know that we don’t always get everything right, and it’s important we also share the Annual Complaints and Feedback Report. We are a large organisation with thousands of interactions with the public every day – it’s vital that we learn from when things don’t go well for our residents so that we can improve services for the future.”

The Annual Report, Annual Complaints and Feedback Report and key indicators information are available on the council’s website.  The council welcomes feedback on these reports.