Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Annual Report
Agenda item 7 is an oral evidence-taking session with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman on his 2011-12 annual report. Members have a copy of the report and a Scottish Parliament information centre briefing paper. I welcome to the meeting the ombudsman, Jim Martin and, from the SPSO, Emma Gray, head of policy and external communications; Paul McFadden, head of complaints standards; and Niki Maclean, director.
Mr Martin, do you wish to make an opening statement?
Jim Martin (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman)
I will be very brief, convener. After all, you have my annual report and we have also sent you a note covering items of interest that I have lifted from it.
I want to cover a couple of points in these remarks. We project that in 2012-13—in other words, in the current year—we will receive somewhere around 4,100 to 4,200 complaints; in 2009-10, we received 3,307. Indeed, in the period between 2009-10 and the publication of our last annual report the number of complaints coming to my office increased 23 per cent, mainly because of additions to our jurisdiction. In that time, we have taken over responsibility for complaints about the prison service, prison health complaints, complaints about Scottish Water and other water complaints, including those about Business Stream, Scottish Water’s commercial arm. The increase in 2011-12 alone was 12 per cent. The point is that demand for our services is increasing.
Like other public sector bodies and bodies that are funded by the Parliament, we have been asked to reduce our spending. If we strip out the additions to our jurisdiction, we will have achieved a 15 per cent reduction in spend over that period. In fact, we will be spending less cash in 2012-13 than we spent in 2010-11.
My organisation has two core parts—the part that deals with complaints, and the complaints standards authority, which sets up complaints-handling procedures in public services. The headcount in the first part has been reduced by two full-time equivalents. We are not a big organisation and such a reduction is going to have an impact. That said, my office’s productivity in the year covered by the annual report increased by 12 per cent, at a time when a significant number of staff were off on long-term—but not, I am pleased to say, work-related—sickness.
I am going through this litany because we—like all public sector bodies—are trying to do more with less. Because we are a demand-led organisation, it is difficult to meet expectations about service levels when faced with both an increase in demand and a reduction in resources. Had we not changed our working methods in 2010, we would have been in serious trouble. We are far more efficient now than we were then and that has got us through.
In my note, I highlight that, in the coming 12 months, four or five different areas might be brought in that might impact on my organisation. The impact is unquantified because the decisions have yet to be taken. However, I want to put down a marker with the committee: the one thing that seems not to be stopping is the increase in demand. In the current financial year, we reckon that we will be somewhere between 5 and 7 per cent ahead of where we were last year, which you will remember was a 12 per cent increase on the previous year. Something will have to give if the resourcing remains the same, with the two most likely areas being the timescales in which we deal with things and the quality of our work. I am very reluctant to touch quality. Those of you who have had a chance to look at our external survey of stakeholder views and complainant views will see that people want us to maintain quality and rigour—they put those ahead of timescale. We will try to do that, but it will be increasingly difficult. That is the first point.
Secondly, I pay tribute to the work of the complaints standards authority team in my office, which is trying to deliver standardised complaint-handling procedures across the public service. By the end of this financial year, all local authorities and housing associations will be operating under the new model complaint-handling procedures, and by October the procedures will also apply to all further and higher education establishments. We are beginning to look at the Government and its agencies—around 100 bodies—which will be our target for the next financial year.
The fact that we have got so far so quickly, and with so much co-operation and partnership working with so many bodies, is a tribute to my team, which is led by Paul McFadden, who is here today. The complaint-handling procedures will have a real impact on local authorities. The committee may want to explore that, which we would be happy for you to do.
A spin-off from that work is that Audit Scotland has agreed to check compliance with the complaint-handling procedures. I hope that we will soon—if not in 2013-14 then certainly in 2014-15—bring to the committee a view on where complaints are arising in local government, how they are being dealt with and what the outcomes look like. That may be good data for the committee to use in its work.
Finally, if I may, I would like to suggest two or three corrections to the SPICe briefing that I know the committee has had. I think that there are one or two errors in it. The SPICe briefing states that, in 2011-12, we did not lay in Parliament any reports pertaining to local authorities. In the annual report, you will see that in fact we laid 11 reports—almost one a month—on local authorities.
The SPICe briefing also indicates that reports relating to decision letters were not found anywhere. The reason for that is that we are not permitted by statute to publish our decision letters in full. In 2010, we sought and gained permission from Parliament to publish summaries of our decision letters, so the briefing is slightly misleading. In fact, I think that 77 summaries of decision letters that go back to December will be laid before Parliament today.
The briefing says that we claim, but cannot show, that we publish positive actions by bodies under my jurisdiction, such as local authorities. We do; that is on the website, and we would be happy to sit down with officials from SPICe and talk them through where to find that information. I just wanted to put that on the record.
Thank you, Mr Martin. When you gave evidence to the committee last year, a lot of what you had to say was based on your strategic plan, which was quite new at the time. I have looked through a number of the bits and pieces that we have, including your annual report, but there does not seem to be much in those documents about your strategic plan. Can you tell us why that is the case? I hope that your strategic plan is not like many others that we have come across from other bodies over the years—plans that are put together, but are then put on a shelf to gather dust.
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Apart from anything else, we are lacking shelf space, so that is not the case.
I think that I have explained to the committee previously that the strategic plan that we produce is approved by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The way in which the plan is implemented is contained in our business plan, which is also approved by the corporate body. We have therefore been engaged with it in discussing the strategic plan, progress against it, and our business plan. My director, Niki Maclean, and Paul McFadden meet the corporate body monthly to talk through where we are in relation to our business plan, strategic plan and budget. All those things are in place.
The corporate body is asking us to change the content of our annual report to better reflect the strategic plan. Next year’s annual report will do that. The strategic plan is a living document and scrutiny of it is undertaken by officials of the corporate body on a regular—monthly—basis.
It is all fair and well, Mr Martin, that the corporate body and your staff are reviewing the strategic plan on a regular basis, but members of the public should be able to see exactly what is going on vis-à-vis the plan and its implementation. From the documents that we have, which are the documents that members of the public would have a look at, and a number of other things, it does not seem to me that the strategic plan is a living and breathing document. It might well be that to Ms Maclean, Mr McFadden and members of the corporate body, but to members of the public it seems that it is slightly amiss. Since so much emphasis was put on the strategic plan when you gave evidence last year, I ask you to ensure that members of the public who pay close attention to the SPSO can actually see what is happening with implementation of the plan.
To be clear, the strategic plan begins in 2012-13. The annual report that you are asking me about is the annual report for 2011-12. The annual report for 2012-13 will reflect the strategic plan as agreed and in the way that the corporate body asked. If you like, I am between two masters. One is the corporate body.
I agree with you that the public should see that, and I hope that you agree with me that we publish as much information as we possibly can, but it would not be possible to show progress against a strategic plan that does not kick in until after the annual report that we are discussing has ended.
But we should have an indication in the documents of how the strategic plan is going to be implemented when it becomes a live document. I think that this is remiss, to be honest with you. There is quite a lot of criticism of your organisation out there, much of which you will come across on a daily basis. As happened last time you came before the committee, we had a flurry of communications before your coming here, although it has to be said that that is to be expected in the game that you are in.
Can you provide the committee with a written report on the implementation of the strategic plan? We would like to see such a report and I think that it would make your life a lot easier if it was available to the public as well.
I am happy to do that, convener. However, I stress that the corporate body is currently asking us to report on that strategic plan in a particular way. Can I ask the clerks of the two committees to discuss whether the format is suitable for both committees? I do not want to meet this committee next year with a report that is appropriate for the corporate body but that is not appropriate for this committee. If the clerks could get their heads together about that, we will happily comply with your request.
I am happy to have a written report on what is being given to the corporate body at this moment in time. I do not want to create any more work for you. If we could have that, I would be immensely grateful.
To move on to the role of the SPSO, you describe the organisation as a “model complaints service” and as a “final tier complaints resolver”. That is quite different from being an appellate body. Can you explain the difference and elaborate on what you do? Do the public understand the difference? If not, what steps are you taking to address that?
The abolition of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council in England—and, therefore, of the Scottish committee of the AJTC—has brought this issue to the fore. I know that the Government and others are considering what the administrative justice landscape in Scotland should look like.
We are a complaints body. My powers are set out in the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2002, as approved by Parliament. That act brought together four different ombudsman offices, each with slightly different powers and different areas of jurisdiction. For example, the health powers that I have include being able to look at clinical decision making. The powers that I have as regards local authorities allow me to look at matters on which local authorities do not have discretion, except where there is maladministration or service failure.
When people believe that the services that they have received from bodies that are under my jurisdiction are not up to scratch, they can bring their complaints to me. We have structured our office so that, at the front end, we listen to people when they come in and then signpost them to the appropriate areas. Some of those areas might be what you describe as appellate bodies—perhaps tribunals or perhaps other bodies—but our aim is to ensure that the citizen gets to the point where a decision can best be made on the issues that they have raised.
I have seen definitions that suggest that tribunals and appellate bodies deal with cases where there is a clearly defined benefit that people can get, whereas complaints over maladministration or service failure do not fit easily into that model. I think that the public generally are confused about where to go with complaints and about their rights of appeal in a number of areas. We try to signpost them to the appropriate body to deal with their appeal or complaint or whatever it might be.
If this committee and other committees want to look at the administrative justice system and how it should go forward post the abolition of the Scottish committee of the AJTC, that should be done. However, it should be done in concert with the Scottish Government and with the United Kingdom Government, because UK bodies also operate in Scotland. It is a confused landscape.
We have talked about timescales. When a complaint comes into your office and you have no jurisdiction, how quickly do you get back to the complainant and do you offer them advice about where to go next?
Niki Maclean (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman)
That is exactly what we do. If the complaint is obviously out of our jurisdiction, our advice team deals with it pretty much as soon as somebody calls. Part of that service is about redirecting the person and signposting them to the correct route. If the complaint requires more in-depth review, it would normally be dealt with within two weeks, unless it is a complex case that needs legal advice, for example, around jurisdiction. The individual would be signposted to the correct service.
Mr Martin, what defines high-quality service in the eyes of your customers and how do you measure it?
You will see in the Craigforth survey of complainants that views on quality of service are often guided by the outcome of our decisions, which is the same for all ombudsman offices that I know of.
We are trying to find a quality assurance system that allows us to look at the quality of the work that is being produced across our organisation and the quality and speed of our decision making, to test those things and to learn lessons from that. We have not reinvented anything; we brought in a new quality assurance methodology a year or two ago. We have run it and it has been externally tested by our internal auditors, and we are constantly trying to learn how to improve quality.
Niki Maclean looks after quality assurance, so she might be able to answer your question.
We look at a number of quality assurance aspects including, fundamentally, whether a decision was correct, whether the decision was communicated in a way that was clear to the complainant and whether, if something was out of our jurisdiction, the complainant was clearly signposted elsewhere. As Jim Martin said, we also look at things such as the timescales that were involved in handling a complaint.
If, as Mr Martin mentioned, inquiries and complaint numbers are rising and you are reducing your budget, how will you deliver quality service to your customers?
Quality is the thing that goes last. Those of you who know the history of the SPSO will know that two or three years ago it took forever to get a decision. The office had cases that were three, four and five years old. We do not have such cases now—we have that under control.
Given that other areas may soon be added to my jurisdiction and given the demand that is coming in while we are having to cut resources, I am concerned that one of two things will have to go: the timescales that we operate to or the quality of our work. Everything tells me that timescales rather than quality will be sacrificed. From the Craigforth survey and from talking to people, we know that the quality of decision making is the thing that matters.
People have sometimes complained that we take decisions too quickly, whereas in the past we have been criticised for not taking decisions quickly enough. Culturally, what we are trying to drive into the organisation is quality, quality, quality.
How many people were contacted for the Craigforth survey and what percentage is that of the number of complaints that you deal with over a given period?
At Craigforth’s suggestion, we changed the methodology this year. I will let Emma Gray deal with your question, as she was the architect of the survey.
Emma Gray (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman)
As we outlined in our briefing, for the past six years, we have sought customer feedback. For the first four or five years, we did a postal written questionnaire, which was quantitative. Craigforth said that we were getting the same kind of feedback every year and that there would be nothing new to learn from continuing that type of survey, so on its advice we moved to a qualitative survey.
Craigforth wrote to everyone who had received our service and asked them to join focus groups. Thirty-three people came to the two focus group sessions that Craigforth set up, which was a very small percentage of complainants, but we have no control over who wishes to be involved in a focus group. The findings of the focus group discussions constitute the current survey.
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My calculation is that that amounts to less than 3 per cent of the total number of people who used the service in the given period. How does that method of surveying users of the service compare with the previous method of conducting surveys, whereby you wrote to all the users and asked them for their views?
I think that it has brought us tremendously valuable information. We can get only so far with a questionnaire in which we ask people how satisfied they were with the service on a scale from “Very” to “Not at all”. We wanted to probe what it is about our service that people are not satisfied with. We wanted to know whether it is how we communicate with them, the timescales or the decision that we made, or whether there was something that we could have done better to communicate what we can and cannot do. That was what the Craigforth data gave us. We found that people prefer to have more face-to-face contact and more time on the telephone. There were exceptions but, by and large, people would prefer to have a more informal means of speaking with our complaints reviewers than to go through formal written channels.
In response, as you will see from the SPSO management response to the findings, we have rolled out a much greater emphasis on face-to-face and telephone contact, especially when the circumstances of the complaint are highly distressing. We have done two sessions of telephone skills training, which we approached the Samaritans to run, because many of the people who come to us are extremely stressed or distressed about the circumstances of their complaint. We wanted to get people who had a real handle on how to deal with those who are, in some cases, extremely emotionally traumatised, so that we could help our reviewers to deal with the issues that people bring us. The Craigforth survey has given us a feel for what people have not been happy about and an opportunity to change what we do and to implement training in the areas in which people are telling us that they would like us to improve.
There are other questions that I want to ask, but other members are waiting, so I will examine the issue further later in the questioning.
We will stay with the Craigforth report, which I have in front of me. I would be interested to know how you are using its findings to make improvements. Its conclusion states:
“Based on the people spoken to as part of this study, it is fair to say that taking a complaint to the SPSO is unlikely to result in indifference or ambivalence towards the organisation. It is unusual to speak to a group of people who are so clearly and significantly divided about an organisation as was the case for Listening to Complainants 2012.
Unsurprisingly, people’s views were largely coloured by the final outcome in their case. Those that did not achieve the outcome they had hoped for—either because the SPSO was not able to take on their complaint or because their complaint was not upheld—tended to be dissatisfied. Very understandably, their strength of feeling was often linked to the nature of their complaint, with those that had made a complaint relating to very difficult and personal events often left very disappointed by their contact with the SPSO.”
My colleagues and I are often unable to resolve cases for people. However, if we talk that through with them, most folk understand the reasoning behind that. It seems that, in the SPSO’s case, many people do not understand why you cannot deal with their complaint any further. Can you explain why that is the case? In this life, I find that the vast bulk of people are pretty reasonable: if you give them an explanation of why you cannot do something, although they might not like it, they normally understand it.
We try to give as full an explanation as possible of why we reached a decision. One of the richest pieces of information to come out of the Craigforth survey is that people are least happy when we explain the restrictions on our powers. People bring local authority planning issues to us and we tell them that there are areas that we can and cannot look at. For example, we cannot overturn a planning decision. People are often angry and upset that we cannot do that. Members have brought their own cases to me and I have had to explain to them that, under the 2002 act, I am precluded from looking at some issues. Some members are very annoyed, too. So one issue is the powers.
Secondly, it is important to remember the stage that we come in at, which is after the complaint has been aired and rehearsed. Until now, there might be four or five stages in the local authority, although that will not be the case in future. The matter has been rehearsed, and people have firm views and come to us as a last resort. At that point, we are the ones who say that there is no further route for them to go down, which can upset people.
In health, we deal with cases that are heart-rending for the families involved. We often have to tell them that, although their case is difficult—it involves a death or whatever—we have found that the practitioners, or whoever, acted appropriately. People react emotionally to that. As we are at the end of the line, we have come to expect that.
I have discussed the issue with my colleagues in other ombudsman offices in the United Kingdom, to see if anybody is getting it right. I have to tell you that it is par for the course for an ombudsman’s office that people who get decisions that they agree with and like tend to think that the organisation is marvellous, and people who do not, tend not to. I am afraid that it comes with the turf.
Many of us round the table, and fellow parliamentary colleagues, are not in a dissimilar position. Sometimes we have to tell folk, “This is as far as we can go with this case.” Cases can often be heart-rending, like some of the ones that you deal with.
If somebody came to my office who had not got the decision that they wanted but who was as deeply unhappy as some of the folk who have come to you, I would be worried about the way in which I had communicated with that person. I think that the Craigforth findings will help you to improve in that area. In the run-up to our sessions with you, we receive correspondence from people who, if they had been communicated with a bit better, would not be in the position that they are in.
That may be your view, convener. In our quality assurance, we look at how we respond to people when we are breaking news to them that they do not like. We are trying hard to learn lessons on how to do that. I concede that, in some cases, we do not get it right—we are a normal organisation—but by and large we do. If the committee were to take soundings from other parts of the UK and other ombudsman offices, it would find that a similar thing happens when other ombudsmen come before committees such as this. Committees have people who write to them. I would hazard a guess that few people who are satisfied and who think that we have done a good job write to the committee to praise us. As I think I said when I was here last year, we try to treat everyone fairly and in the same way. However, people will come to the committee and the committee must make its judgments from that.
Mr Martin, you are upholding more complaints. I am interested to establish what redress complainants are receiving. Do you have adequate powers of enforcement? What follow-up action do you take to ensure that your decisions are implemented?
We monitor carefully all the recommendations that we make. Every recommendation that leaves our office is accompanied by a timescale for implementation, which is followed up and checked to ensure that it has happened.
When I came to the committee last year, I mentioned two authorities that I thought were possibly on the brink of telling me that they were not going to implement my recommendations. In the end, they did, and I think that one of the reasons for that was the fact that we had that conversation in this committee, which concentrated some minds.
I am beginning to get increasingly concerned about the redress that we offer. In the main, we try to see whether we can put someone in the position that they were in before whatever it was that went wrong happened. Often, that involves an apology. Looking around my colleagues in the rest of the United Kingdom, I note that a judicial review in Northern Ireland in December upheld the practice there of the ombudsman offering consolatory payments to members of the public in situations in which he believes that the actions of a body that is under his jurisdiction are such that that action is required. For example, in the case that was taken to judicial review, he asked that a general practitioner pay £10,000 to the family of a patient that he had been dealing with.
We have not gone down that route in Scotland, but I am beginning to think that we should think about the powers that I have in that area and see whether people in Scotland are at a disadvantage compared to people in the rest of the UK. That should be addressed in the next year or so. We have got to the position that we are in today through a process of the evolution of what happened in the four offices that were brought together and what has happened in the SPSO, and it might be time to take stock of that.
In respect of the health service, it is sometimes not possible to put people back in the position that they were in before whatever went wrong took place. However, the national health service and the Scottish Prison Service are good at learning lessons from things that have gone wrong. People who come to me say most often that they hope that the outcome of our examining the issue will be that what happened to them does not happen to someone else. We are having a real effect in the health service.
I mentioned that we have produced 77 summaries of decisions. We produce a number of them every month. Those summaries are there to be learned from. Increasingly, across local authorities, housing associations, health and universities, people are taking up that opportunity. One of the impacts that we are having is ensuring that people learn from the mistakes of others.
I am thinking quite hard about the question of redress.
Have you raised with the Scottish Government the possibility of amending the law in order to give you more powers?
Not yet, because I want to get my thinking clear first. I wanted to wait until I could see the outcome of the judicial review in Northern Ireland.
Bear in mind the fact that, four or five years ago, the Parliament reviewed my office’s powers and decided that they should stay the same. For example, one of the areas in which other ombudsmen’s offices can be effective is with regard to own-power initiatives. If an ombudsman sees a number of things happening, they can instigate an investigation into areas such as aspects of care of the elderly, or issues around how planning has been dealt with in a particular council. At the moment, I have no powers to do that. I can react only to individual complaints as they are brought to me.
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Another point that is put to me is that instead of having the power to recommend I should have the power to direct. I am less sanguine about that because I am not convinced that the ombudsman should have the power to direct budgets of bodies under their jurisdiction. I might have used this example at previous meetings—if so, I apologise for repeating it—but I once received advice from a medical adviser that multiple births should take place in an operating theatre. In the end, I chose not to accept that and set it out as a recommendation; after all, it sounds fine until you work out what its impact would be on the health service in Scotland. Making such a recommendation for consideration is one thing; directing a health board to do it is quite another. Directing spend is a very important function that should be kept as democratic as possible and be undertaken by people in local authorities, the Government or wherever. It should not be part of an ombudsman’s role. I simply do not think that ombudsmen should have the power to direct.
It was good to hear you say that the NHS and the prison service are very good at learning lessons and moving forward. I note, however, that there are 14 health boards. When you make a recommendation and a health board agrees to follow it and make certain changes, what follow-up work does your office undertake to ensure that that has happened?
Or, indeed, how do you liaise with audit bodies to ensure that they are aware of your decisions and that they can do the follow-up work with health boards, local government or wherever?
Boards are notified of our recommendations through investigation reports or decision letters. In all cases, they are given a timescale that they must meet and must provide adequate evidence to demonstrate that they have fulfilled the recommendations. Of course, the evidence that we would expect them to produce depends on the type of recommendation.
For example, we might say—as we indeed did say to Glasgow southern general hospital at one point—“We need you to reassure us that you have an action plan for a particular area to deal with elderly people’s pressure sores” and, in response, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde produced an action plan and evidenced that it was in place. We certainly follow up these things.
An important point for those who bring complaints is that authorities are getting better at apologising appropriately. Complainants now rarely get letters saying, “The ombudsman has told me that I have to apologise to you. Here is a letter of apology.” If we can get better at apologising earlier for things that have gone wrong, my case load might go down. Acknowledgement and apology are very important parts of redress and very often they are all that people are looking for.
I also point out that the Scottish Government always logs our recommendations with regard to health complaints and follows them up with boards by asking for evidence that they have fulfilled them. One of the reasons why lessons are so well shared in the NHS and the Scottish Prison Service is that, in addition to our own checks, what you might call the umbrella organisation for those bodies co-ordinates activity and follows things up, which adds extra impetus to the recommendations.
Your fifth key performance indicator is to measure how quickly organisations implement your recommendations. Your target in that respect is 95 per cent, but what has the percentage been thus far?
It was around 88 per cent for 2011-12. The interesting point about that measure is that ultimately it is down to the board or body to ensure that it meets the timetable. Jim Martin has already highlighted what our statutory powers are in that regard. We work hard to ensure that boards and bodies meet the timescales, but ultimately it is a matter for them.
You talked about the parliamentary review of your organisation that took place a few years back. Obviously, some of us were not parliamentarians at that time, but my understanding is that the review was more about increasing your powers by bringing in new bodies, rather than about a full review of what you did. Can you give us some detail on that?
It is true that that was what was looked at, but in the course of that review areas such as own-initiative powers were considered by the body that undertook the review, which I think was called the RSSB.
Yes, it was the Review of SPCB Supported Bodies Committee.
Perhaps we will have a further look at that at a later date.
Following your previous appearance before the committee, which was last year, your comments were well analysed. Some people who have been in touch with us have re-affirmed that they do not think that your organisation is fit for purpose. Can you comment on that?
I think that that goes to the exchange that the convener and I had earlier. After I spoke to the committee last year, a number of ombudsmen in the United Kingdom had freedom of information requests about or requests to confirm that what I said to the committee was accurate regarding the number of UK ombudsman bodies that were coming to us to study how we were doing things: our processes, our quality assurance and that kind of thing. I think that my office was still receiving FOI requests in that regard 10 months after my appearance before the committee. I expect that that will probably happen again after this visit to the committee.
I am sure that the committee’s mailbag about my office’s activities will tend to increase when I come to the committee. I know from discussions between my office and the committee clerks that there is on-going correspondence about my office between a number of people and the committee clerks. I suspect that for many of those cases there is not a lot that I can do to make that situation stop or to improve it. After checking with other ombudsmen’s offices in the UK, I am reassured—that is perhaps the wrong word, but it certainly makes me happier—to know that their appearances before parliamentary committees puts them in much the same position as I am with regard to the situation that I have described. As I said to the convener earlier, I expect that that will continue.
You highlighted in the introduction to your annual report the complaints trends and said that the number of complaints that you receive could be reduced if local authorities, for example, tightened up their complaints processes. Can you expand on that point?
Paul McFadden will say a word or two about what we are doing with local authorities on their complaints handling processes. I will just say that, when a complainant raises an issue, the quicker that it is resolved—and the closer to them the resolution is geographically—the better. Issues that are allowed to fester in systems lead to entrenched positions, which make it difficult to get solutions that can satisfy both parties.
I ask Paul McFadden to talk to you about the work that we have been doing with Scotland’s local authorities to try to improve processes and procedures.
Paul McFadden (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman)
Jim Martin said in his opening remarks that by the end of March all local authorities will have committed to have in place a model complaints handling procedure that is in line with the standardised model that we have outlined for all public sector bodies. We are ahead of expectations in that regard. As of September last year, over a quarter of local authorities had confirmed to us that they were already operating the streamlined, two-stage model across all their services, which we regard as great progress and a testament to how seriously they take the issue.
The core of what we are trying to achieve is to have a standardised model across all 32 local authorities, so that there are two stages to a complaint—as opposed to the four or five that occur in some local authorities, to which Jim Martin alluded—with timescales of five and 20 days for each stage. There will therefore be a clear standard for both processes and timescales, with the aim of resolving complaints more quickly.
Going beyond that, however, there is a cultural element with regard to resolving complaints and reducing the number that come to us, which is very much about a focus on empowering front-line staff and trying to formalise the initial interaction with customers in order to resolve complaints as close to the point of service as possible. The vast majority of issues that people complain about are relatively straightforward to resolve close to the point of service. However, if staff are not trained or authorised, for example, to apologise for a service failure, a complaint can escalate through all the stages that I have indicated and come to us, by which point it will have grown arms and legs and another 10 heads of complaint. There is therefore a strong focus on face-to-face and telephone contact for resolving complaints as close as possible to the point of contact in the service.
The second part of the cultural element is about getting it right the first time. Many of the appeal stages that previously assisted in complaints processes were used or regarded as a safety net that provided another chance to consider a complaint before it got to the ombudsman. The onus now will be on having a one-off investigation of 20 days before there is an opportunity for a complaint to come to us. The culture of getting it right the first time will be achieved through individual training and awareness raising, including learning about the complaints that we uphold. In addition, local authorities and their departments must try to learn lessons from the complaints that they resolve.
So I must assume that the learning curve is still a work in progress.
Yes. As I said, though, we have seen a move by over a quarter of local authorities to adopt the new model. No doubt it will take time to achieve some of the cultural elements, but councils are taking the issue seriously. We therefore expect to see quick progress in improving their complaints handling.
In your introduction, Mr Martin, you gave us figures for the complaints that you have received over the past four years. Can you tell us how many of those complaints were about the SPSO?
I will take that one. We have a process for service delivery complaints about our own service. We received 32 complaints for 2011-12. We have an independent service delivery reviewer, who is currently David Thomas, former deputy ombudsman of the Financial Ombudsman Service. Of the 32 complaints that we received, 13 went on to David Thomas to handle.
Do you not think that it would be good for the committee if your annual report included information about the complaints that were made about your organisation?
That information is in the report. A whole section is dedicated to the independent service delivery reviewer. It outlines not only the number of complaints but some of their key themes.
Okay. I turn now to the budget. Mr Martin, you said that your budget had been squeezed and that you had had to make efficiencies and so on. Given those circumstances, do you think it wise for you to extend your jurisdiction to a number of other areas? Will doing that reduce your level of service?
11:45
The extent of my jurisdiction is out of my control; it is a matter of decisions by Parliament and Government. For example, the creation of revenue Scotland was based on a decision that was taken for pretty sound reasons, but the fact that that body will come into being automatically means that it will come into my jurisdiction. There is nothing that I can do about that.
The abolition of the mechanism for handling the social fund by the UK Government means that each of the jurisdictions in the United Kingdom must find a way of administering the fund. I believe that there will be in a two-tier system that local authorities will administer, which means that their work in that area will automatically come under my jurisdiction. There is nothing that I can do about that. If the responsibilities of local authorities or other public bodies that are under my jurisdiction are changed, it has an impact on me.
Before prisons and water complaints came over, there was careful discussion about what resources would come, too—whether people or cash or both would come. That transfer was carefully thought through, and it is a really good model for new areas coming into my jurisdiction that involve complaint handling.
On the impacts on other areas, I hope that, by raising issues here and with the Government and others, people will understand that there will be knock-on effects on bodies such as mine.
Health in prisons is an area that shows the difficulty in planning. Until a year ago, the Scottish Prison Service provided health services in prisons. The decision was taken that those services would go to the national health service. In the last year of its operation, the number of appeals in the Scottish Prison Service outwith prisons to the Scottish ministers was 511, and a reasonable calculation would have been that a similar number would be the maximum that we could expect to come to us. In effect, we found that 46 came to us in the first year. I suspect that that is because the system is not working terribly well yet and that the number will increase.
The difficulty in planning ahead for such impacts is in trying to work out whether the impact will be the same, increase or reduce. When things have come under our jurisdiction that were not there before, we have often found that there is an initial spike of people wanting cases that have already been looked at elsewhere to be reopened, and that the demand then tends to fade away. I am trying to highlight the fact that, if we are going to increase the areas of jurisdiction within the SPSO framework but resources do not follow, given our budgetary constraints the quality of service that we can offer may not be as good as I would like it to be.
The start is the fundamental principle of whether you want a one-stop shop for complaints handling. I know that that issue has previously been discussed in committee. Our perspective is that a one-stop shop is the sensible approach for the users of public services as it simplifies the landscape for them so that they can easily access complaints services. There might be complications in resourcing that in the back office, but I think that that is fundamentally the way that things should go.
We are running out of time, so questions should be brief and answers should be concise, please.
I have brief questions about the budget. In your budget report, you say that you have spent £163,000 on professional fees. Will you briefly tell us why that was the case? Could that service have been delivered in-house?
We require expert advice in certain areas of complaint. We have discussed that before. For example, we obviously do not have the expertise in-house to look at health complaints in which the clinical decision that was reached can also be considered, so we procure medical expertise and advice from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman down south, which contracts its own medical advisers. The majority of that spend relates to professional advice in the different areas in which we work.
Finally, you accrued £93,000 in other income. Where did that come from?
One area of work that we have been running in support of the complaints standards authority is to deliver cost-recovery training to bodies under our jurisdiction. That involves training front-line staff and complaints-handling staff in, for example, investigation skills. The majority of income came from that source.
Before I bring in Mr Wilson, I have a question on the chapter in the annual report on “Independent Service Delivery Review”, which includes comments from those who acted as reviewer over that period. What is the process by which a complaint is sent to the independent reviewer? Who decides that?
The complainant will decide that. In line with the model that we are introducing across the public sector, we follow a process that provides two opportunities to resolve a complaint, either as a front-line complaint or as a stage 2 complaint that I would deal with as head of complaint standards. After stage 2, we will inform the complainant that, if they remain dissatisfied, they have the opportunity to approach the independent service delivery reviewer, who will then make a decision on whether to accept the complaint. Complaints go to the ISDR at the complainant’s behest.
Once again, I should put on record that I have known Mr Martin for a number of years. I will not say how many exactly, but it covers a period of up to three decades.
You have referred to two authorities that you felt were not prepared to implement your recommendations. From a discussion on a previous SPSO annual report that was considered by the then Local Government and Communities Committee, of which I was a member in the previous parliamentary session, I recall that we discussed whether the SPSO’s powers might be enhanced so that, in those circumstances, it could lay a special report before Parliament. Has there been any further movement on giving the SPSO a power to lay before Parliament a special report, which would have the effect of forcing the agency or authority concerned to implement the SPSO’s recommendations? Has there been any movement on introducing a legislative change to ensure that further issues of that nature are not repeated?
I am grateful to this committee for referring that matter, after my previous appearance here, to the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, which has engaged with us on that. I think that we are due to get back to that committee by the end of this month, so discussions are on-going. I am grateful to this committee for its intervention on that.
Thank you very much for that, Mr Martin.
I also have a question on the Craigforth review, which you said was based on a focus group in which 33 people participated. For clarification, were those 33 individuals self-selecting? If so, given the amount of correspondence and emails that we receive from dissatisfied customers of the service, surely there is a danger that the focus group will have reflected only the views of those individuals who were aggrieved by the organisation’s service delivery rather than those of the satisfied customers that Mr Martin referred to earlier?
Emma Gray worked with Craigforth to ensure that a valid survey was put together, so I will ask her to respond to that.
Given that the focus groups were to involve complainants with fresh experiences of our service, Craigforth wrote to everyone whose complaint had been closed in the previous three months to ask them whether they would like to participate. I do not know whether the people who have contacted the committee were included in that group, but Craigforth wrote to everybody. The individuals were self-selecting, as those who wished to be involved put themselves forward to attend the focus group meetings. I am not sure what else I can say on that front.
That is a really good point. Jim Martin and I see such casework letters every day, but we also see letters each week from people who are satisfied with the service. Those include, for example, a letter this week from someone whose complaint we had not upheld following a very complex investigation but who thanked us for the investigation’s thoroughness and level of detail. There is a challenge about how we then reflect that back publicly.
I appreciate Ms Gray’s response that it was individuals who had a complaint closed in the previous three months who were asked to participate in the survey. How do you measure individuals’ satisfaction levels in relation to continuing case-handling work by the SPSO?
Paul McFadden mentioned service delivery complaints, but I will describe what we try to do when we are handling complaints.
It is not as if a complaint simply comes into the building, is dealt with and goes out again with no contact. We try to ensure that there is regular contact between the complaint reviewer and the complainant as we go. When we are going to look at a complaint, the first stage is a conversation with the complainant to determine exactly what he or she is complaining about. We agree a head of complaint and we then write to the complainant and say, “This is what we think we are about to examine on your behalf. Please sign to say that you agree.” Their response comes back to us, and we engage from that point on.
Complainants often contact us under their own initiative to discuss how things are progressing and so on, but our complaints reviewers have set timescales within which they have to go back and tell people about the progress that we are making, so it is an interactive process.
What we tried to do with Craigforth this time was to see whether we could get qualitative feedback that would help to add to the quality assurance work that we are doing and the new process that we have brought in to ensure that the journey for our customers is as good as it can possibly be.
Thank you for that. I take on board the point that you made earlier about your having two masters but, looking at the situation, I think that you have more than that. You have a number of masters all of whom are demanding their pound of flesh from the SPSO. They include the Government, the corporate body, this committee, parliamentarians and the public.
Given the issues that have been raised by the committee today, by the focus group and by individuals who have complained to elected members, how do you intend to move forward to get the message across about exactly what the SPSO can do for individuals who make complaints against agencies or local authorities?
One of the significant figures in the annual report is the percentage of premature complaints that come to the SPSO. It has reduced from 52 or 53 per cent to about 42 per cent. One issue that we are trying to deal with is how we can get people’s complaints resolved as quickly as possible without their coming to the SPSO. My colleague in Wales tells me that he is going to have his face on the back of buses in Cardiff. I fear for the people of Cardiff. The danger of that approach—I hope that he does not read the Official Report of this meeting—is that people will come to the ombudsman rather than, perhaps, to the local authority. We are not geared up to deal with that front-end approach.
If you remember—you probably will, Mr Wilson, because you were at the committee meeting—Douglas Sinclair suggested that we should have a single signposting area for all complaints in Scotland, but it was decided that that would be too costly. They now have that in Wales. Perhaps we should revisit the idea, but at present I believe that our strategy of getting ownership of complaints and resolving them, as far as possible, through empowered staff in the public service and efficient, quick complaint handling procedures is the best way in which to deal with the real problem, which is not that I am under so much pressure from many different masters but that the people of Scotland need a sure way of resolving their complaints as quickly as possible.
What action do you take to measure progress towards delivery of the first part of your vision? I quote from page 55 of your annual report:
“Our vision is of enhanced public confidence in high quality, continually improving public services in Scotland which consistently meet the highest standards of public administration.”
You are seeing it in action through the work that is being done to improve the process in the complaints standards authority. We produce monthly a compendium that shows a distillation of the decisions that we have taken in the previous month, such as the 77 that we are issuing today and the two publicly laid reports. We engage with the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, COSLA and local authorities. At present, I am meeting the chief executive of every health board and local authority in Scotland to go through their body’s performance and get feedback on the SPSO’s performance and how we can improve. We are looking to engage with people more and more to deliver that vision.
If we are to help improve the delivery of public services in Scotland, we must use the learning from what we see—put in context, because we only see where things go wrong or where people perceive that things go wrong.
As members have no further questions, I thank you for your time today, folks.
We now move into private session.
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Meeting continued in private until 13:00.