Sharing learning with Parliament

In her evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) in February 2011, the Ombudsman warned that at present there is no cross-government view of what a good complaint handling system should look like. She said:

‘Every week, another bit of government comes and asks us to have a look at some changes they are making to their complaints system and whether we think this fits with the Principles of Good Complaint Handling. All this work is going on in compartments, in different bits of government, with no overarching sense of who and where is the design authority for complaint-handling systems in government.¹’

The Ombudsman’s comments sit within the context of the Coalition Government’s agenda for change. In July 2011, the Government published its Open Public Services White Paper, which sets out proposals to expand the delivery of public services to include a range of diverse providers from the private and voluntary sectors. Describing the state as a ‘guarantor of standards’, the paper warns potential providers that unless they can match or better the Government’s minimum standards, they will have no place in delivering public services.

A recent report by PASC about these reforms, Change in Government: Agenda for Leadership, echoed the Ombudsman’s concerns about the Government’s failure to overcome departmental silos and to address ‘cross cutting issues’ across departmental boundaries. The report identifies the need for the civil service to develop its capability to contract and commission services from the voluntary and private sectors and we would expect this capability to include setting clear and transparent standards for complaint handling.

Sharing learning with government

Had such standards existed across departments, at least one of the investigations we published this year would not have been needed. A Breach of Confidence tells the story of our investigation into a complaint by a woman whose personal details had been incorrectly recorded on a government database. As her details spread across the computer systems of three different public bodies, she was unable to get them corrected, or to get any of the bodies involved to take the lead in putting things right. Instead, they all blamed each other and it took an investigation by the Ombudsman to get them to accept their responsibilities, correct the mistake and agree that cross-cutting issues would be addressed.

As a result of that report, we asked the Cabinet Office to take the lead in ensuring that the three agencies involved in that complaint work together to ensure that complaints which involve more than one agency are handled in a coordinated way in future. Since our investigation, Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell has assured us that guidance on handling cross-cutting complaints has been implemented by the departments concerned and that a protocol has been developed for all government departments to implement when sharing personal data.

Sharing learning with departments and public bodies

Recently we came to the end of a lengthy and complex investigation into the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) treatment of one family who were interned by the Japanese during the Second World War. Described by the Ombudsman as ‘required reading for every aspiring senior civil servant’, Defending the Indefensible tells the story of repeated and compounded failure by the MoD to get things right, despite a previous ‘upheld’ investigation by the Ombudsman, criticism from PASC and adverse findings by the courts. The circumstances leading to the recent publication of Defending the Indefensible highlight how much work is needed to ensure that learning from complaints is embedded within departmental processes and we welcomed the MoD’s commitment to launch its own review of what went so wrong, for so long.

In her evidence to Parliament in February, the Ombudsman explained that when mistakes had been made the opportunity to put things right quickly and to learn from feedback immediately and in ‘real-time’ was key to improving public services. We have worked directly with departments and public bodies to improve their capacity to learn from feedback and put things right swiftly for individual complainants.

In our meetings with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), we have witnessed a clear commitment to improve the experience of people claiming tax credits. That commitment has been demonstrated through HMRC’s willingness to engage with us as soon as we identify signs of failure or poor service, enabling us to resolve complaints quickly and without the need for an in-depth investigation. We have been able to achieve prompt and effective resolution on a number of cases and ensured that any learning from the cases we have considered is fed back to HMRC.

During 2010-11, we received and accepted for investigation a higher number of complaints about the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) than previously. The complainants told us that Cafcass had not considered their complaints in accordance with their complaints policy, or with reference to their guidance for staff and organisational standards. They also told us that Cafcass had not put matters right, even when they acknowledged things had gone wrong. We met with the Chief Executive of Cafcass to explore what lay behind those complaints. As a result of our investigations, which showed Cafcass were failing to get the basics of good complaint handling right, they have made complaint handling one of their top five organisational priorities for the months ahead. We continue to work with Cafcass on this issue.

In one particular case our investigation has led to wide ranging improvements for the service provided to vulnerable people. Jobcentre Plus took action on our recommendations following an investigation into the experiences of a vulnerable woman who was struggling to resolve her complaint with them. As a result of our investigation, featured here, Jobcentre Plus have changed their definition of ‘vulnerable’; they plan to identify ‘district champions’ for vulnerable clients; and they are working to improve how and when they identify clients who need people to act on their behalf when dealing with them.