Whitehall's complaints systems are 'inconsistent and unaccountable'

25 Oct 11
Complaint handling by government bodies is 'inconsistent, haphazard and unaccountable', the Whitehall ombudsman has found after surveying 35 departments and quangos.

By Mark Smulian | 25 October 2011

Complaint handling by government bodies is ‘inconsistent, haphazard and unaccountable’, the Whitehall ombudsman has found after surveying 35 departments and quangos.

Parliamentary and health service ombudsman Ann Abraham said there was no ‘overarching design, overall standards or common performance framework’. Different departments had different stages the public had to go through before being allowed to take their case to the ombudsman service, varying from one to four.

She said this wasted time and money. Failing to resolve complaints also meant public bodies missed the chance to improve services by learning from them.

Abraham’s survey revealed huge variations in the processes used by different bodies, in most cases for no obvious reason. She said: ‘Disappointingly, this reveals complaint handling across government to be inconsistent, haphazard and unaccountable.’

Although she accepted that a ‘one-size fits all’ complaint handling system would not work, she attacked the lack of any ‘shared view across government of the standard of complaint handling that a member of the public can reasonably expect’.

She noted that there were few controls over how public bodies handled complaints.

‘I do not have the mandate or the mechanisms to provide assurance on complaint handling efficiency and effectiveness across government. Neither does anyone else,’ Abraham noted.

The ombudsman service last year secured more than £360,000 in compensation for aggrieved complainants.

‘This figure does not reveal the cost in time and resource taken up by lengthy and protracted complaints systems or the sometimes devastating human cost of the failure to put things right for individuals,’ Abraham said.

In 2010/11, there were 7,360 complaints and she wholly or partly upheld 78% of them.

Tax credits, the courts and child support were the most common sources of complaints.

The most complained-about government body was the Department for Work and Pensions, with 2,462 cases, followed by Revenue & Customs with 1,671.

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