This report details the complaint handling performance of government departments and other public bodies in the UK in 2010-11. Complaints about these bodies must be referred to us by a Member of Parliament (MP). Last year, we resolved 7,569 complaints about such bodies.

We judge government departments and public bodies against the standards for good administration and complaint handling set out in full in the Ombudsman’s Principles. The Principles of Good Complaint Handling were published in November 2008. All the Principles are available on our website at  www.ombudsman.org.uk

Helping people complain

We expect public bodies to have clear and simple procedures. They should publish clear and complete information about how to complain and how and when to take complaints further.

On 5,590 occasions last year, we referred the complainant back to the public body concerned, because they had not completed the body’s own complaints procedure. Of those, 4,861 complaints also came to us without an MP referral. On 425 occasions the complainant chose not to progress their complaint further or did not obtain an  MP referral.

224 complaints were about issues outside our remit.

Putting things right

Public bodies should put mistakes right quickly and effectively. They should acknowledge mistakes and apologise where appropriate.

On 1,078 occasions last year, we were able to reassure the complainant that the public body concerned had already put things right, or that there was no case to answer.

Where things have gone wrong, we ask public bodies to apologise and put things right quickly and effectively, without the need for a formal investigation. Last year, 106 Parliamentary complaints were resolved this way, and a further 21 complaints were resolved when we provided the complainant with an explanation about what had happened.

Learning from complaints

Lessons learnt from complaints should be used to improve public services. Where possible, the complainant should be returned to the position they would have been in if the circumstances leading to the complaint had not occurred.

We accepted 125 complaints for formal investigation and reported on 120 complaints investigated. If a complaint is upheld or partly upheld, we recommend actions for the body in question to take to put things right and to learn from the complaint. We upheld or partly upheld 78 per cent of parliamentary complaints and all our recommendations for action were accepted.

More information about the numbers of complaints about government departments and public bodies received and resolved in 2010-11 can be found here.

• In this report, we use the term ‘public body’ to refer to any government organisation within our jurisdiction.
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• We use the term ‘government department’ to refer to any public body that also has responsibility for other bodies.