The local government watchdog has criticised Redbridge for the second year in a row over the council's responses to its investigations.

Each summer, the independent Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO), which handles the final stage of complaints by residents about councils, writes an annual review letter summarising each council’s performance.

For two years in a row, the LGO has urged Redbridge’s chief executive to reply to ombudsman investigators in a more “timely way” and to stop providing “incomplete responses”.

A council spokesperson said it had made progress regarding the timeliness of its responses and was confident the authority will improve on it over the next year.

Last year the council had to be threatened with a witness summons before it would send investigators information about one case.

LGO chair Michael King said that the council’s complaint handling had “fallen below the standards we expect”.

This year, the ombudsman’s annual letter reminded new chief executive Claire Symonds of last year’s issues.

Mr King added: “It is disappointing to again report concerns about your council’s responses to our enquiries.”

The LGO noted that in the past year it took the unusual step of publishing a detailed report on Redbridge’s failure to carry out a proper annual review of the education, health and care plan for an autistic man with learning disabilities.

It said it did so because of the council’s “unwillingness” to accept the findings or recommendations.

In response, a Redbridge Council spokesperson told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the “crucial point” is that it always responds to the ombudsman but accepted there is “room for improvement”.

They added: “We’re actively working on this and we now have a range of measures to ensure the timeliness of responses getting to the ombudsman."

Annual statistics in the letter show the LGO upheld 26 of the 36 complaints that residents escalated after reaching the council’s third stage of complaints.

This is compared to 31 of 42 investigated complaints upheld in Newham and 14 of 22 in Waltham Forest.

Redbridge’s spokesperson said the council has seen a 33 per cent increase in stage one complaints in the last year, reaching a total of 1,730.

Unhappy residents escalated only 11pc of those complaints to stage two.