Year at a glance
In 2010-11 we received 7,360 Parliamentary complaints and continued work on 568 complaints we carried over from 2009-10.
We resolved 7,5694 complaints and carried over 359 into 2011-12.
5,590 complaints were made to us before the public body had done all they could to respond; 4,861 of those had also not been made through an MP, as the law requires. We gave the people making those complaints advice about how to complain to the public body and how to complain to us again if they were not satisfied with the response.
On 425 occasions, the complainant chose not to progress their complaint further or we did not hear from them again after we had told them that they had to put their complaint to us through an MP.
We gave advice on 224 complaints that were not in our remit and signposted people to the correct organisation to complain to, where possible.
For 1,078 complaints we reassured the complainant that there was no case for the public body to answer, or we explained how the body had already put things right.
We achieved a swift resolution in 127 complaints by helping to put things right without the need for a formal investigation. We resolved 106 of those complaints by intervening directly with the public body complained about, and in a further 21 complaints we provided the remedy ourselves by providing a further explanation about what had happened.
We accepted 125 complaints for formal investigation and reported on 1205 complaints investigated, of which 78 per cent were upheld or partly upheld.
The most common reason complainants gave us for being unhappy with a public body’s complaint handling was that they had provided an inadequate financial remedy.
4. The number of complaints resolved is greater than the number of complaints received because some complaints were carried over from the last business year.5. The number of complaints reported on is different from the number accepted for investigation because some investigations were not completed in the year and others from the previous year were reported on.
