Our processes are designed so that our consideration of complaints is robust, balanced and fair to everyone involved. We use the Ombudsman’s Principles to help establish a clear understanding about what should have happened in each complaint. The Principles are broad statements of what we consider public services should do to deliver good administration and customer service, and how they should respond when things go wrong.

In November 2011 our approach to resolving complaints about poor service provided to people with disabilities was tested in the High Court as the result of a legal challenge by Mencap. The judge ruled that our approach produced ‘useful and lawful investigations’ and said that without our investigations, many complaints could only be determined, if at all, by the courts, which would be unlikely to be welcome to complainants.