Complaints closed by public service watchdog up 10%

Scotland’s public sector watchdog dealt with a 10% increase in complaints in 2022/23, according to new statistics.

The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) closed 3,829 cases – an increase of 337 on 2021/21 data.

Ombudsman Rosemary Agnew received a further 3,527 complaints between April 2022 and the end of March 2023, more than a third (34%) relating to the health sector and 30% about local authorities.

Of the 1,193 health complaints, 761 related to issues with clinical treatment or diagnosis, while 144 was about staff attitude and confidentiality.

In local government, 250 complaints were made about housing, 140 on education and 124 on social work, with 1,051 made about councils in total in 2022/23.

Other sectors complained about included housing associations (10%), prisons (7%) universities (6%) and the Scottish Government (5%).

Following investigation, the SPSO made 348 recommendations to public sector bodies, with more than half – 182 – on learning and improvement to ensure the issue raised in the complaint does not happen again.

A further 32 recommendations were about complaints handling improvements.

Ms Agnew said she is “proud of the progress” made on responding to cases, as the watchdog focused on recovering from the backlog created by the pandemic.

She said: “But (I) recognise we need to keep a focus on continued improvement and having positive impact.

“Not all complaints need the same level of investigation and we increasingly see the positive impact of our work on good complaints handling across the Scottish public sector in the quality of local complaint handling.

“This means that often we don’t have to investigate beyond initial inquiries because a good local investigation has identified learning and resulted in the action that we would have asked for in those circumstances.”

Some 1,288 cases – equating to 34% of closed cases – were resolved because it was determined the organisation had already investigated and responded appropriately to the complaint.

Ms Agnew continued: “We are driven by our values, and learning and improvement are integral to our approach.

“Our recommendations reflect this drive and our commitment to public service improvement. So many of the people who come to us don’t want others to experience what they did and our aim is to share the learning we identify as widely as we can.”