Friday 16 October - Sunday 18 October: Complaint form offline

The supplier of our case management system has confirmed that they are experiencing a significant technical issue.

At present, we have no access to the case management system and we are currently unable to take new Public Service Complaints or provide updates on cases. We are planning on the basis that this could continue for a period of time including next week.

Please be assured we are doing all we can and will provide updates on our website.

For an all service update: Service update | SPSO

Statistics 2014-15

Introduction

In 2014-15, the SPSO

  • received 772 enquiries and 4,895 complaints (10% more complaints than last year)
  • dealt with a total of 4,802 complaints (9% more than last year), including some carried forward from 2013-14

We continue to see rising levels of complaints, with 10% more complaints reaching us during 2014-15 than in the previous year.

Although the numbers are rising, the proportion of cases that reached us without having first gone through the public organisation's complaints process remained at the same level as 2013-14, at 34%.

Upheld complaints are those that were valid for us to investigate, and that we fully or partly upheld. The overall level of these also remained stable at 50% in 2014-15, the same proportion as we upheld in 2013-14.

2014-15 statistical tables

Further analysis of our statistics will be available in our annual report, which will be issued later this year.

2014-15 statistics by authority

The Ombudsman sends some authorities an annual letter about their complaint numbers.
This year the Ombudsman is asking organisations to confirm to him that the learning from SPSO complaints has been discussed at a senior level by signing and returning a learning and improvement statement. The aim is to ensure that lessons are being learned and mistakes are not repeated.

Ombudsman's letter and learning and improvement statement (PDF, 182KB).

Updated: January 26, 2024