BLACKBURN with Darwen’s customer services boss has welcomed a major increase in complaints about the council’s performance as evidence of better feedback from residents.

Coun Yusuf Jan-Virmani blamed Government cuts for some of the extra 1,456 gripes and said better information collection was also responsible for the more than 40 per cent rise.

The executive member for customer services said the borough encouraged people to give their views, adding that when it got things wrong, it wanted to know.

On Thursday, Coun Jan-Virmani will tell the borough’s executive board the number of complaints to the council rose by 1,456 from 3,893 in 2011/12 to 5,359 in 2012/13.

Of these, 5,027 were resolved informally in the last full year, compared to 3,521 in the previous 12 months. He will say 322 moved to the formal complaint stage and 20 were then taken to the local government ombudsman because the complainant was unhappy with the council’s handling of the problem. In 2011/2012, 372 moved on to the formal stage and 42 went to the ombudsman.

Coun Jan-Virmani also reports that compliments from the public more than doubled, from 533 to 1,273.

The main areas of complaint were to environment (up 35 per cent) about bins, recycling and garden waste; and to finance (up 36 per cent) about council tax and benefits.

Coun Jan-Virmani said: “Times are tough with the reduction in funding from central Government, which has affected every service.

“We are absolutely committed to making every council service the best it can possibly be. The only way to do this is by residents telling us if there are problems. When we get things wrong, we want to be told so we can make them right and keep them right in the future.

“We have seen a 13 per cent reduction in the number of formal complaints, which shows we are resolving them at the earliest stage possible to people’s satisfaction.”