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The next item on our agenda is to take evidence as part of our scrutiny of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. We are joined for this item by the ombudsman, Rosemary Agnew. Ms Agnew is joined by Andrew Crawford, head of improvement, standards and engagement, and Judy Saddler, head of investigations, public service complaints, both of whom are from the SPSO. I welcome you all to our meeting, and I invite Ms Agnew to make a short opening statement.
I will keep it very short because I am aware that we are a bit behind time. I want to reinforce something that I put in my letter to you a little while ago. The year that we are in is my last full year as ombudsman and will be my accounting year next year. I will not see that report, and this is likely to be my last expected appearance before the committee.
I have been reflecting on the number of times that I have been here over the years, and I want to thank you for the what I think has been fair, but not always easy, challenge that you have given us, because answering your questions has caused us to be very reflective about what we do and how we operate.
I am really proud of my organisation. They are an incredible group of people and I feel that, come next May, I will be leaving the organisation in great shape for the ombudsman after me.
Thank you very much. I will leave it there and we will get straight into questions, which is probably easier.
Thank you so much. It is helpful for us to hear that the cycle of feedback and reflection is useful for you in developing your approaches. I have a couple of opening questions, then I will bring in other members.
The SPSO was set up in 2002 to provide
“a public sector complaints system which is open, accountable, easily accessible to all and has the trust of the Scottish public.”
What evidence can the SPSO provide that shows that those aims have been achieved?
There is probably no single source. On the aims to be open, accountable and accessible, we achieve all of those to a degree. It is worth being honest about that: we achieve all of them. We have improved our accessibility no end, but it is still a journey that we are on.
For example, we are currently embarked on quite an ambitious piece of work about how we can make contact with those who do not traditionally complain. On openness, we have completely reviewed the way that we give reasons for our decisions. We publish as much as we can, but there is still work to do. Some of that relates to legislative functions, and there are things in our legislation that we think can be improved to enable us to be even more open.
One of the areas where we would like to have done more is accessibility, but, again, that is tied into legislation. There are two specific things. One is about being able to take complaints in any format. Nearly eight years on, I still have, in large part, to take complaints in writing. When I reflect on how much I have achieved, I think that the one thing that I have not achieved, which I desperately wanted to achieve, was the establishment of own-initiative powers. Those are key to enabling us to investigate things that are not complained about. As managers and leaders in the organisation, we can see areas where we could make a difference.
On customer satisfaction and impact, a downside of the job, if you like, is that most of what gets out there are the things that do not work and the unhappy complainers—those whom we would like to help but sometimes cannot, because of jurisdictional aims.
We have done two specific pieces of work. I might pass to Andrew Crawford in a moment to talk about the work that we have done on customer service feedback, which stalled during Covid, for many reasons. I might also ask Judy Saddler to talk about some of the areas of impact from our complaints that perhaps are not always as obvious. Andrew, I will pass over to you.
We have identified, as Rosemary Agnew said, that most of the things out there on the internet relate to where people have been dissatisfied, as it is dissatisfied people who tend to put their feedback in the public domain. We get lots of unsolicited feedback that is very positive and we share that internally as part of our own learning and improvement, but we have identified that we need to do more work on feedback. That is tied into your question about accessibility and trust, convener, and I think that both matters go hand in hand.
We have done a piece of work to look at where we get complaints from and we have mapped that against the Scottish index of multiple deprivation and local authorities. We looked for areas that are outliers—where we get numbers of complaints that are above average and, more important, where we get numbers of complaints that are below average, or no complaints. Those are the areas where we will do some awareness-raising work over the next one to three years. It is a long-term programme, because it is not something that we can just react to and get meaningful feedback on.
The other thing that we are acutely aware of is that we used to do service user forums. We want to bring those back, but we need to tease out where they would fit best, and how to get meaningful use of them, so that we can use the data to drive our improvement work. Those things go hand in hand, and that is one of the high priority things that we are looking at over the next one to three years, as part of our programme.
In terms of impact on individual complaints, we achieve a lot at pre-investigation stage, which is a stage at which we do not publicise what we achieve. For example, we have achieved financial settlements in a number of cases, particularly in kinship care cases. There was a significant financial settlement in one case involving in excess of £60,000 in backdated payments. We have also achieved financial redress in relation to backdated payments, such as redress in excess of £6,000 for a disabled child in the previous quarter.
Not only do we achieve financial redress; we achieve a lot in terms of reflective learning in organisations without going to investigation or making recommendations. In response to our inquiries, organisations will carry out more work, more training and more reflective learning.
We achieve quite a lot at our early pre-investigation stage, as well as at our more statutory investigation stage, where we publicise our achievements.
There are other functions, including a welfare fund model complaints handling procedure, which have come on board since that work has started. We will maybe pick those up in our answers to other questions, if that is okay.
Great. I have a number of questions about the number of complaints. As we have been discussing, the ombudsman has an important role in helping public services to improve their service provision, but a near record number of public service complaints was received in the past year. Is the ombudsman therefore helping to improve public services, given the number of complaints?
Yes, I think that that is the case. Judy Saddler mentioned the reflective learning on systemic issues, and I think that an initiative in that area would help even more.
It is worth reflecting that the rising number of complaints that come to us is indicative of rising complaint numbers in public services. From experience, we know that dissatisfaction at a local level leads to more complaints. Dissatisfaction can often be driven by a number of things; there is no single cause. Undoubtedly, one of the causes has been cuts to public services and funding being allocated to other functions. From our work on model complaints handling and supporting public bodies, we are aware that many public bodies are struggling to cope with the number of complaints that they are getting.
Our data shows that, for many years, there was a decline in the number of premature complaints, which are those that have not been through the local process. The number of those complaints is now rising again, and there was a significant rise last year. Those complaints were not necessarily about people not knowing where to go; they were about people not receiving responses or cases getting stuck at a local level.
We have a support and intervention policy, and the idea is that it clearly sets out what we will do in relation to complaints handling. As well as giving feedback and making recommendations, we will, in the first instance, offer support if we recognise a trend, and we have completely revamped the training that public bodies can access.
Other things are probably creeping in now. There is an increased expectation, particularly since Covid, that things should go back to how they were. Given the programme of public service reform combined with some of the huge changes in technology, there is probably an element of fear. In relation to health complaints, people were waiting a few months before Covid, and now they can be waiting years. I would be worried if I was waiting for an operation that I was not getting soon enough, so the number of such complaints is going up.
It would be really good to carry out research—we do not have the resources to do it, unfortunately—to try to quantify the number of complaints that organisations, particularly big ones, receive at a local level. I was reflecting on my days as the Scottish Information Commissioner, when we managed to set up a portal to which major schedule 1 organisations uploaded their statistics quarterly. That was really interesting, because it told us that fewer than 0.5 per cent of information requests ended up being appealed, and I would like to see the same for complaints. Public bodies make so many transactions, and we do not always have the data to focus on individual areas, which is why we started doing the work that Andrew Crawford talked about.
The number of complaints is going up, but there has been a particular benefit from the amount of investigatory work that we do, as Judy Saddler made reference to, before there are statutory investigations. We resolve a lot of cases and see evidence of really good complaints handling, and we would not be able to take that more proportionate and people-centred approach if there had not been improvement at the local level.
Access to advocacy is also often missing. Patient advisory services provide a really good service to support people in making health complaints, for example, but there is not the same level of advocacy and support for all complainers or in all areas, so it is worth looking into that wider system issue.
So that we can connect this into our conversation, can you say how many complaints there have been about public services this year and how that number compares with those in previous years?
I do not know whether Judy Saddler wants to pick up that question.
While you are looking for that information—Judy Saddler can perhaps pull it out—I can ask another question. You have talked about improvements at the local level. For clarity, is that to do with the model complaints handling approach?
09:30
Yes, but it is not enough to just have model complaints handling; support and advice must also be provided, which is part of what Andrew Crawford’s team does. It is time to revise and review the approach, because the world has changed, and the combination of training, intervention and support makes a difference.
Andrew Crawford, do you want to give examples of some of the things that your team does?
My team oversees all the functions that Rosemary Agnew mentioned. We have revamped the training that we offer to local authorities and more widely. There are two stages: there is a good complaints handling offer, and there is investigation skills training, which provides real value for local authorities. We take them through how to investigate a complaint, how to ensure that the heads of complaint are agreed with the complainant, how to ensure that the complainant is satisfied with progress, how to keep the complainant informed in relation to timescales and expectations and, equally important, how to write the decision letter in a way that the complainant can understand. We are still trying to tease out that issue. There are lots of things that need to be included, but, if we pare things back, we find that people just want simple language. As Rosemary Agnew said, that accessibility journey for everything that we do is on-going.
In relation to the team’s work on the model complaints handling procedures, we have multiple engagement sessions with local authorities, health boards and so on throughout the year in order to share good practice. When we have identified good practice by a local authority in delivering a resolution for a complainant or in relation to its procedures, we encourage it to share that practice at those network meetings. We then bring everything back in and, as Rosemary Agnew said, use it when we revamp or refresh our internal procedures.
Our support and intervention policy is very much about providing support. We offer to support local authorities with whatever recommendations they receive, whether that is through providing training, looking at how they go through procedures or helping them to identify and sort out pitfalls. A lot of that work goes on.
Local authorities are feeling the pressure, given that the number of people who can deal with complaints at the local level has diminished. That has had a knock-on effect on the amount of complaints that come to us, because a lot of the complaints are about communication, timeliness and so on. That feeds into the situation.
I will make the “I didn’t get my homework done in time” excuse. We finished our notes yesterday, so that we could have the most up-to-date numbers at our fingertips, but none of the printers worked when we got to the office this morning, which is why we are sitting here with laptops and cannot find anything.
On the numbers, in my first annual report, which covered my predecessor’s final year, we had 4,182 complaints. In the latest complete financial year—2023-24—we had 4,686. That might not sound like a huge number, but it represents a really significant rise: there has been a rise of about 12 per cent over that seven or eight-year period.
What is significant is not just the rise but the profile of the complaints that we have received. Going hand in hand with the work on model complaints handling, we are able to process more complaints in a different way, but that means that, on paper, it looks as though not as many complaints are being carried forward for formal investigation. However, what we are doing is far more targeted and a much better use of resources. It is clear that, over the past three or four years, the uphold rate for our statutory investigations has gone up, because we are focusing on the complaints on which we think we can make the most difference or in which there is a public interest.
There is another significant thing about the rise in the number of complaints. There was a bit of volatility during the Covid lockdown, which was not overly representative, so, for planning purposes, we have been using the 2019-20 year, which was the last full year before there were all those other things. There has been a rise in the number of complaints of more than 600 since then.
In the first two quarters of this year, the number of complaints has still gone up. That has had two impacts. First, there has been an impact on our ability to handle the complaints, because we have put in place a number of quality measures. I think that quality has got better—we are much better at reflective learning—but we are probably at the limit of what we can absorb through efficiencies. We have had a lot of what we call agile projects, in which we focus on one specific thing, test something to see whether it works and, if it works well, roll it out to the whole organisation. Andrew Crawford and Judy Saddler have described some of those things.
My concern is that, during those eight years, our investigative capacity has not gone up; it has remained pretty static. We have also taken on other functions, such as those relating to the welfare fund review and whistleblowing. I think that there will be a sea change in complaints handling in the wider public sector, because, although it is right to say that we should learn from complaints and that we should provide a good service, if there are too many complaints, you get into a cycle in which you just try to deal with complaints all the time and do not have the resources or the mental space to step back and look at whether redesign is needed.
We are trying to pick up some of that through a review of the complaints handling principles. I think that our consultation launches today. We are trying to reflect the changes in the wider environment and move away from always being so process driven to encouraging a far more outcomes-focused approach. It is about what can be achieved at the outset of a complaint. The draft document that is going out for consultation draws on human rights language and is much more about focusing on the person as well as the issue that is being complained about. I do not think that we would have got to that point without learning from complaints ourselves.
I am quite concerned about the rise in the number of complaints. There is a bit of levelling off at the moment, but we do not know whether that will be sustained, and the levelling off is at a point that is even higher than the level last year.
Thanks for going into that detail. Prior to talking about the numbers, you gave a bit of background to explain why, potentially, we are in this position.
Good morning, Rosemary and colleagues. I will share with you a couple of pieces of evidence from our session two weeks ago.
The first is on social care provision. Age Scotland told us that it feels that people are being denied access to social care at certain times of the year. The committee is wondering whether you are aware of that and what action has been taken. Could you share with us any recommendations that have been taken up to address the issues that were raised with us?
Give me the easy questions. [Laughter.]
Social care is quite complex because it can fall under adult services, which are local authority services, it can fall under health and social care partnerships, which are commissioning organisations, and it can fall under the jurisdiction of the Care Inspectorate, in respect of care homes. I will not say that the evidence was misguided or wrong: I think that it is probably true, but I cannot give you numbers that will say that.
If I look at the sectors that we get complaints from, I see that the number of complaints is going up in healthcare and social care. Local authorities are always one of the biggest areas on which there are complaints, and such complaints have gone up quite significantly.
Some of that is related to resources. There is no consistency: different local authorities put different amounts of money into care. There is also almost certainly something related to assessments, and there are links to healthcare. We have had complaints about healthcare that have their roots in unavailability of care home places and what have you.
This is a very good example of where the landscape is changing, and where there is probably more need to start focusing on the life journey and where services intersect, rather than focusing on care. That is where care becomes a challenge. There is not the same advocacy support available for people to make complaints about care.
Another area on which we have had direct feedback is relatives often being more fearful of complaining about care provision than about healthcare because they are afraid that it will affect the relationship and that care will not be provided any more. That is something that we know about, but it does not always come directly into our jurisdiction because it is to do with care homes. Certainly, that is an area on which a lot more thinking about the complaint journey is needed.
That is an interesting answer. I understand the difficulties that you probably face with that crossover of responsibilities. Looking forward, what should we try to do, or what could we recommend, to resolve that issue? My colleagues will in a wee minute ask questions about the national health service and the responses that you get from that sector, but just in general terms, how can you make the process easier? People might complain about an issue that you decide transcends a number of areas, departments and functions. Can you still carry out a full investigation, or do you need the additional powers that we talked about earlier to strengthen your ability to inquire?
The answer is yes to both. We are used to working together, once a complaint reaches us or the Care Inspectorate. In some cases, the issue is accessibility and knowing where to go in the first place to make a complaint. That goes back to advocacy. There is definitely more that can be done legislatively to enable us to share more information among organisations that have abutting, but not necessarily overlapping, powers.
Investment, for want of a better word, would help people on the ground—I would be very interested to hear other’s views on this—through making them feel confident in complaining and there being a much clearer complaint route. If you are going to complain to a local authority, the process is usually pretty clear: there will be information on how to make a complaint. However, someone in a local authority care home, although it would be a local authority complaint, might not know where to complain and might be afraid to say anything to the care home and not want to complain to it.
The problem might even be as basic as someone not having a computer, because so much is done in that way. The matter is double-edged: there is definitely work to do on accessibility, which links to some of the work that Andrew Crawford talked about, but, equally, being able to more proactively share information among oversight bodies would be hugely beneficial.
09:45
Another issue is that some groups feel that the relationship between the ombudsman and public bodies is too close. In fact, Accountability Scotland said to us that the SPSO is not measuring service standards against best practice and that too much agreement with public bodies is evident. I invite you to respond on the relationship that you have with public bodies. Is it too close?
No. I am very interested in seeing that evidence.
This is where we come back to the powers that the SPSO has been given over the years. The model complaints handling powers are not just about complaints handling: they are also about monitoring complaints standards and making improvements in complaint handling.
We operate, in effect—I am not sure that I should say this in Edinburgh—on tram tracks. On one track, I absolutely hold public bodies to account in a complaint, as do my investigators and managers. When we are looking at complaints, we also look at how they have been handled at the local level and we give a lot of feedback, and we might even make recommendations. It is not uncommon for us to send a complaint back to a public body saying that it has not done it well enough and to do it again. That is not to prolong an issue: it is because the best resolutions are often at local level.
Hand in hand with that, we have to support organisations on the improvement journey by providing training and an advice line on how to handle complaints.
It is not a fair statement to say that we do not hold them to account. One of the very interesting things to consider is the standards to which organisations are held to account. We hold them to account against model complaints handling, but some of the thinking that they have expressed has led us—at the same time, but separately—to look again at complaint handling principles, which have been in place for over a decade. I do not think that the principles completely match the environment that we are in. A complainer should be able to go to a public body knowing what under what principles and standards their complaint will be handled.
That is not just about saying that people will receive a response in five days: it is about the wider principles—for example, saying that people will be listened to, and that they will be communicated with effectively. We are doing a review of the complaint handling principles anyway. That is an opportunity for us, once they are agreed by Parliament, to really start pushing people to show how they are delivering against the principles, and not just asking how they do the process. I think that that would be insightful.
Thank you.
On the expertise that you have with which to conduct an inquiry and investigation, do you have the breadth of experience that is needed to look at healthcare? We have talked about that this morning. From where do you draw expertise to conduct a thorough, proper and balanced investigation? We know that public bodies will have all the expertise to hand to answer you, but often the complainer will not have that same depth and breadth of awareness, so how do you make sure the process is balanced? How do you make sure that you have the expertise that you need to conduct an investigation?
I am happy to answer, then Rosemary can come in.
As complaints reviewers, we are laypeople: we are not health experts. In a healthcare case, we have a panel of independent advisers who provide us with the technical information that we need. In healthcare cases we can look at whether clinical practice was reasonable. As laypeople, we do not know that, so we go to our panel of advisers. Normally, in each case we ask for advice from one adviser.
Where we are expert is in complaint handling. We have a wealth of experience across the public service complaints function with the SPSO, and we have a lot of expert knowledge in complaints handling. In other areas—for example, healthcare, social work and planning; the technical areas—we recognise that we need technical advice. We have a good panel of expertise that we can go to.
It is worth saying that we are expert at asking questions of our advisers. They are not employees, but contractors. It is not the case that a person can just volunteer and be an adviser. They are selected—they must have a minimum of experience and qualifications. My complaints reviewers and Judy Saddler and her team have that experience.
If we are not sure about something, we challenge it. If we think that we need a second opinion, we get a second opinion. In our decisions, we always set out the advice that we have received and relied on, because it is our decision whether to accept it. Sometimes that is quite difficult—for example, where somebody believes that something has happened, and I absolutely do not doubt their experience.
What the medical profession can achieve may be miraculous on occasions, but there is currently a high expectation of what healthcare can deliver, which goes beyond technical care. In many cases, our findings are related to communication rather than to the standard of care. In healthcare cases, complainers have better support through patient advisory services. People do not have the same support in social care, which is an omission.
The other thing to mention about our advisers is that if we spot a theme or a trend, we might get extra advice or a legal summary of the legislation relating to the matter. It is like any other area: we cannot possibly have experts in everything, but I am confident that we get access to very good advice.
Does your panel of advisers reach out to complainers to get a more rounded bigger picture and a more articulate presentation of the issue? As I have said, the balance of evidence can sometimes favour the institutional side in the quality and depth of the defence paperwork that you might receive on an issue. Do you reach out to complainers to ensure that there is a balance when it comes to the quality and quantity of information that you consider?
There is no direct contact with the complainer, but there is no direct contact between the advisers and the public bodies, either. On occasion, we have had direct contact, but as our advisers are practising professionals who might well be working in a hospital or a general practitioner practice, we do not give out the names of our advisers. However, we will always put questions back to them. If the complainer does not understand something and they ask us a question that we cannot answer, we will ensure that their views are heard and that we test what they say.
Difficulties have sometimes arisen not in relation to the nature of the professional advice that we have had, but in relation to the nature of the records on which that advice is based. We can only go down an evidence-based route. The most challenging complaints are those in relation to which one person’s recollection of a consultation is not necessarily 100 per cent the same as the level of detail in their medical notes. Although there is no direct contact, we will make sure that we pass things on and that we challenge what we have been told with our advisers. As I said, if we think that we need different or additional advice, we will also get that.
Thank you very much for answering those questions.
At this point, I will give a bit of a time prompt to our witnesses, because we are not even halfway through our questions. What you have said has been very useful, and you have started to touch on a few things that we might want to go into in more detail, but I would appreciate it if you could be more succinct in your responses. I realise that that is challenging, because you are trying to convey a lot of important information. If committee members could also be succinct in their questioning, that would be gratefully appreciated.
Good morning. Accountability Scotland has argued that the SPSO is “a toothless tiger” and that you are not able to get much out of public bodies. When you ask questions, they do not always answer all the questions that you pose to them. How would you respond to Accountability Scotland’s interpretation? Do you agree that the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2002 needs to be changed to allow you to exert a degree of compulsion on public bodies?
We have a degree of compulsion, which we will use, but we have never had to use it. If, at the end of an investigation, we make a recommendation that is not complied with, ultimately we can bring a special report to Parliament. We have never had to do that, not because we have backed out or changed anything, but because organisations have always complied with recommendations to our satisfaction. During an investigation, I have powers to require information to be provided. If that information is not provided, my ultimate recourse is that I can go to the Court of Session, because such a failure to provide information is regarded as contempt.
I can understand Accountability Scotland’s perception. In the past 18 months to two years, I would say that we have got much better at progressing things and demanding information more often through our support and intervention policy. We face a challenge whereby, unless we get corroborating information, we have to rely on what we are given, up to a point. However, that is where what the complainer has to say is important, because information from the complainer—it is not only information from public bodies that we take into account—might cause us to ask for further information.
I do not think that we need extra powers, because we have not had to use the full extent of those that we already have.
Two weeks ago, Professor Gill indicated that although NHS boards will accept and act on some of your recommendations, they will do so only, as he put it,
“in a rather minimalist and grudging fashion.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 26 November; c 4.]
Once again, that is the perception of another individual, but what is your assessment of that? Does the same go for local authorities? What needs to change so that public bodies are more receptive to criticism and open to ideas for improvement?
I think that it is unfair on public bodies to make such a sweeping statement, because not all public bodies are the same. There are some organisations that, at various points in time, we might have to push harder, but we will not sign off a case as completely closed until a recommendation has been met to our satisfaction. If a recommendation has not been delivered to the level that we expect, or if the evidence is not there that it has been, we will keep pushing until the organisation does that. In life in general, some people will push back, while others will not. We see different cultures and different levels of practice from different organisations in different areas; we see differences even within the same sector.
I would be interested to know whether specific examples can be provided. We cannot always tell everyone what we have done, because we have to investigate in private. I am not saying that there are no examples out there. There are some organisations that we have to work harder with. However, it is too sweeping a statement to say that there is too much resistance. In my experience, most organisations want to improve, if for no other reason than that it improves the bottom line if they improve the efficiency of their service.
10:00
Good morning. There has been commentary on the long waiting times for some complaints to be considered. Professor Gill noted that that has
“the potential to ... reduce trust and satisfaction among members of the public”.
Do you think that delays could impact public trust in the complaints system overall? What is your response to that suggestion?
That is not a link that I would automatically make. There are lots of things that undermine public trust. In a complaints context, delay causes frustration, worry and anger, but, in my experience—I invite colleagues to comment, too—people would prefer to have their complaint handled well and to have the process take longer, rather than for their complaint to be simply swept along.
In relation to delay, I am not sure whether you mean our delay or organisations’ delays, because they both exist.
It could be both. There could be several reasons for a delay—it could be to do with the vast volumes that we have spoken about or the need for further submissions from public bodies in order for an investigation to continue.
We are bringing down our delay times. For brevity, I will not repeat what we said in our update letter. We are still bringing those times down. We have done a huge amount of work on reducing older complaints, which is helping from a communication point of view.
The potential for confidence—I would say that we are talking about confidence rather than trust—to be undermined relates to the fact that, by definition, complaints are about something that has already happened. Many people who make a complaint will say, “I don’t want this to happen to someone else,” and the longer it takes for a complaint to be handled, the longer it will take for the improvement work to be done.
I do not think that it is a matter of trust being undermined, but I can see that there is a confidence issue. Andrew Crawford might want to add to that.
The other issue that comes into play is the fact that communication is key because, as Rosemary has said, people want to know that their complaint is being handled well and thoroughly. We have done work internally and externally to make sure that that communication is clear. If a complaint will take significantly longer to deal with than initially appeared to be the case, we encourage public bodies and our staff to say that up front.
If a person who complains is told, “This is quite complicated, so we’ll be back in touch in four weeks, but it’ll probably take us about eight weeks to get X amount of information,” that allows them to feel confident in the process, and it builds what people envisage as trust in the service that they are getting.
To go back to the annual report, it states that only 4 per cent of all complaints that were closed last year went through the SPSO’s full investigation stage, which is a much lower level than was the case seven or eight years ago. Why are so few full investigations taking place? Does that undermine the ombudsman’s job of identifying the systemic improvements that need to be made?
I refer back to an answer that I gave earlier: we are not doing any less investigatory work. We are doing fewer of those investigations that we would call statutory investigations, and our uphold rate on those is going up, as we would expect. Those are the investigations in which we are mostly likely to identify systemic changes.
I will ask Judy Saddler to outline some of the activities that do not come under that 4 per cent figure, but which are things that we do on the majority of complaints.
As Rosemary said earlier, on the majority of complaints—this is the case before complaints go to the statutory investigation stage—we will test the evidence. A lot of that work involves investigatory-type work, which includes obtaining the complaint file. If it is a planning case, we will obtain the planning records and test the complaint against what the local protocols are and what the planning guidance is. If it is a technical planning case, we will seek advice. That all happens before the statutory investigation stage. If, having done all that, we realise that we cannot achieve any more for the complainant, we do not think that it is fair or a good use of our resources to then take that complaint through a statutory process, which is a long process, if we cannot achieve a different outcome.
As I alluded to earlier, at the pre-investigation stage, we achieve a lot of significant impact outcomes for complainants. Rosemary mentioned the fact that it is more difficult to publicise and share that, because it takes place at the pre-investigation stage. However, in such circumstances, we do not see the point in moving a complaint through to the investigation stage simply for the sake of it because, again, that will not help the complainant when we have achieved a good outcome for them.
A lot of work is done at the pre-investigation stage. The 4 per cent figure for the proportion of the overall number of complaints that proceed to the full investigation stage reflects our change in approach, whereby we want to move cases to the significant investigation stage only when we know from our pre-investigation inquiries that we can achieve more. At the pre-investigation stage, we will also ask the organisation to do a bit more work to achieve that outcome, so a lot of work goes on at that early stage.
It is probably also worth saying that those early stages are where we will resolve cases. The annual report shows that, of the 2,200 cases that were done in that way, 76 involved a resolution. That does not mean that we do not pick up the learning—we also capture that. This is partly a reflection of our efforts to move towards outcome-focused complaints, in which the complainer is at the centre of things, rather than the process being something that we slavishly follow.
Thank you for that helpful clarification of your processes.
I will bring in Mark Griffin, who joins us online.
In a previous evidence session, Professor Gill and Professor Mullen talked about the lack of national data in areas relating to the complaints system. Generally, what data should be available to assist Parliament in scrutinising the effectiveness of the complaints system? More specifically, is anyone responsible for collecting statistics on the total number of complaints that are received by public bodies and not just the ones that are escalated to the SPSO? Do we have any idea of the proportions of those that are escalated and not escalated? Should we collect that information?
For the sake of brevity, I will go back to the previous answer. Under model complaint handling, organisations are required to keep statistics, and they generally publish them on their websites. In health, I think that Public Health Scotland will have collated health data. However, Professor Gill’s point is valid: we do not have that single point for complaints data that we have in other areas of work.
It is a huge investment to get a mechanism for collecting and collating the data. The answer is probably not to make an organisation responsible for collecting all that data; it is to look at tapping into things such as the Government’s open data strategy, through which data is available in a useable format and can be picked up through technology routes by any organisation. I would very much like Professor Gill to take that on as a project. There is a deal of research to be done on collecting and analysing data, and I see that as probably the next stage in the technology and artificial intelligence journey.
Andrew Crawford might want to pick up on that.
You are right that, if we had an open source of data and the resource to gather and analyse it, that would definitely lead into the other things that we have spoken about this morning. We would be able to identify themes and trends and, if we had own-initiative powers, we could then use them to investigate. That definitely would be a significant step forward for us. As Rosemary Agnew said, the interfaces currently do not talk to one another and the data is not saved or presented in the same way, so it is quite a long journey to get to a point where that data is useable by a single organisation, person or team.
I suspect that the approach would be to see what you can get per sector to start with and have a system that works on that.
Another issue is that organisations need to look not only at their complaints data; in their governance systems, they need to look at their complaints data along with their whistleblowing and human resources data and service agreements and customer feedback. It is about starting to use data holistically, with complaints as one element.
The numbers can be a bit misleading. If you have high numbers, you think that something is wrong. Actually, it is about what learning you are getting from those complaints. If you are consistently getting the same learning from the same areas on the same things, that learning journey has not happened.
It is a very interesting issue, and we could go on forever, but we do not have time. I hope that that is enough.
My other question is on SPSO performance indicators. A previous witness told us that the indicators
“appear to be rather limited and narrow in scope”,
with few or no indicators relating to quality and customer satisfaction. Another concern was that previous customer satisfaction surveys were stopped because they were unfavourable to the SPSO. What is your response to those witnesses’ comments?
I will pass to Andrew Crawford in a moment. The reason why we stopped those surveys was not that they were unfavourable; it was just that the response rates were too small to be viable. We have done a huge amount of work basically resetting and relaunching that.
Andrew might want to pick up some of that on the customer service side.
As I said at the start of the meeting, we have identified that most of the feedback that we get is from people who are dissatisfied at the end of their journey, so we are actively trying to tap into the unsolicited positive feedback as well as the learning feedback that we get. We have a range of ideas about how we will do that. As I said, we want to bring back service user forums and we want more awareness raising in the areas that we have identified where there are no complaints about certain sectors within certain deciles. All the information through our vulnerabilities project, which is in its second year, will feed into that and will allow us to have quite a wide view of how we are viewed by members of the public and service users.
On top of that, lots of work goes on in the organisation around our quality assurance schedules and procedures. We also have an independent customer service complaints reviewer who does an end of year report and who will look at whether we are holding ourselves to the same standards as we hold other public bodies. There is lots of quality assurance, although I take the point that a more rounded and wrapped-up presentation of that might be easier for people to digest at the end of the year.
Judy Saddler might want to add something on the success of the revamped approach.
As Rosemary Agnew said, we halted the customer satisfaction survey a couple of years ago, because we were not getting a meaningful number of responses. We have completely reviewed and refreshed the survey. We piloted that at the end of quarter 4 last year and then we launched it in quarter 1 of this year, so we have two quarters’ worth of data. We want to wait until we have the full year’s data to analyse to identify key themes and trends. We are surveying at more closure points, which was an issue that was raised in the feedback at the sessions that the committee has had. That approach means that we have more data and richer data, and we have had more returns. We analyse the returns quarterly, and we will provide a published set of data at the end of the business year.
Thank you.
10:15
Willie Coffey has a number of questions.
I have two brief questions. One is on the overall review of the SPSO. As you will be aware, the Parliament has agreed to hold a root and branch review of all the commissioner services and so on. What are your views on that? Who should review the SPSO? What should a review of the commissioner service look like?
You need to think about whether you are reviewing the SPSO or the SPSO’s legislation, because our activity and performance are often constrained by our legislation. On a number of my appearances before your good selves, I have expressed my view that there should be a full review of that legislation, because it was written for a time when we did not all do things digitally and we did not all have 1,001 apps on our phones; we were used to operating in a different way and public services were delivered in a different way. There needs to be proper parliamentary scrutiny of our legislation to consider the enabling measures that will empower us to do those value-adding things to a greater extent.
On how we operate day to day, as Andrew Crawford said, we have a number of ways of doing things. We have an external complaints route. We cannot go to an ombudsman, so we go to a third party, who looks at our customer service complaints if people want them to progress to there. We have external and internal auditors. We have an internal audit programme each year that looks at the quality of various things. The external audit is independent and is reflected through our governance meetings, the notes of which we publish.
We also test in other ways. Many of the decisions are made under delegated powers by Judy Saddler’s team and my other officers, as I cannot make every single decision. There is a right to ask for a review, and I review all decisions that are made under delegated powers—I do so objectively, based on what I see. We also have our own quality assurance programme. Two of the officers who support me on complaints reviews, because they are not part of the teams and are separate in that sense, also carry out quality assurance. That is a risk-based approach. For example, one area that we have just looked at is those very early decisions. We recognise that we need to ensure that we are doing all the things that Judy Saddler explained.
An external external review has attractions and risks. Ideally, it would have to be done by somebody who understands what ombudsmen do. For example, we have access to the International Ombudsman Institute, which has a peer review function. It all costs money so, if we want to conduct an external root and branch review, we would have to go to the SPCB to say, “We need some money for that.” This committee is also part of reviewing, in that you look at what we are doing more than once a year now.
We must be very careful about what we expect a review to achieve. Are we looking for improvement in what we currently do or are we looking for extension and reframing of what we do so that we can have added impact?
My final question is about own-initiative powers. You have answered that, so I will ask the question in a different way. You agree that it would be handy to have those powers. What do you do currently if issues arise that are of a wider and more systemic nature? Do you have no powers whatsoever to widen your scope of inquiry? For example, we heard that female prisoners never complain about issues and you will probably never see a complaint from a woman or young girl in prison. What is preventing you from writing to the Scottish Prison Service when an issue arises to ask for feedback and so on? Why do you need the own-initiative powers to solve that?
We actually do write to organisations. Own-initiative powers would give the ability to demand information, but that does not mean that we do not report on things anyway. Most recently, there was a report on the welfare fund and the use by local authorities of the “high most compelling” rating. We can do that, and we do do it, although we need to do more of it, and that is in our business planning. We also do quite a lot that is not necessarily publicised in the same way. On female prisoners, I can outline separately, in writing, some of the things that we are doing on that.
It all comes back to the project on vulnerabilities, data and targeting what is a very limited engagement resource in the way that it is most needed. Own-initiative powers would enable us to dig deeper. We can research, ask and comment, and we can share themes and trends with organisations and with, for example, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, but those are about sharing and raising awareness, which is different from own-initiative powers, which are about having a deep dive into something.
So you need the power to compel, because your experience is that you might not get a response or the quality of response that you hope for.
It is not that we will not get a response. Most organisations probably would try to provide something, but what they try to provide because they are being co-operative is maybe not as deep as they would provide if we had asked very specific questions. There is also an issue of consistency. If you are looking at a systemic issue, you are likely to be looking across a number of organisations or a sector, or even a couple of sectors. The powers would give the ability not just to get a response, but perhaps to get it in good time. It can be an issue to get somebody to do something co-operatively when you know that they are already stretched and busy and have probably been asked by half a dozen inquiries, organisations, groups and researchers for that information. It is as much for the benefit of the issues that we would be looking into as anything else.
Thank you for that.
It was interesting to get a better understanding of that.
I have a couple more questions. With Professor Gill, we talked briefly about trauma-informed approaches, which is something that Scotland is really taking on board. Is your organisation looking at that area in complaint handling?
Yes, and we already have looked at it. In fact, some of our work on early decision making, where we do not take things to statutory investigation, was trauma informed, because it can be incredibly stressful for people to have to keep going over something that was difficult to start with.
All our complaint handling staff have been through the stuff that is on Turas, the NHS Education for Scotland site, on trauma-informed approaches. In our policies, we try to reflect ways in which we might reduce trauma. Equally, we have had our staff trained in vicarious trauma, because it can sometimes be as traumatic for us to read some of the things that we read. Again, that ties in with our vulnerabilities work.
There is not an end point to this. You do not just tick a box and say, “We’ve done trauma informed.” Therefore, the work will be on-going as we review and update policy to ensure that we are reflecting those approaches.
It is good to hear that you are already involved with that.
Finally, your submission states that the SPSO looks at a range of areas that are much broader than just local government and suggests that
“it may be time to consider whether scrutiny of the breadth of our work may go beyond the capacity of a subject specific Committee.”
What parliamentary oversight arrangements would be more appropriate, in your view?
I am a bit nervous about saying how you should do your work. Coming at it from the point of view of the citizen—because we are accountable to citizens through you as Parliament and through the committees—there are very particular issues in some sectors. One of our biggest areas of complaints is local authorities. You will probably have picked up that we tend to highlight things that are of particular interest to this committee, but the same could be said of health, and the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee would have different questions. I do not know whether we expect this, but I think that there could be more accountability through the Finance and Public Administration Committee about the nuts and bolts of how I discharge my function as an accountable officer.
We look at some things that are sectoral and where it would be beneficial to have a different view, given the knowledge around the table. There is also something about the accountable officer role, although we obviously work closely with and are accountable to the corporate body. A lot of work is going on to look at the roles of the office-holders collectively, and that issue will probably come out through that inquiry.
That concludes our questions. Thank you so much for coming in to talk to us. In the conversation, we have raised points that we heard from the witnesses a couple of weeks ago, which has been helpful. At the beginning, we talked about the reflective feedback process and the learning journey that you have been talking about. I trust that our bringing in broader perspectives has been helpful for you.
Absolutely. We try to give you reassurance that we are doing our jobs well but, for me, we have also had the reassurance that a lot of the things that we are doing are hitting the right mark, which is incredibly helpful. We just have to get really good at them and not just very good at them.
Many thanks for joining us this morning.
I briefly suspend the meeting.
10:28 Meeting suspended.Air adhart
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