LGO upholds greater proportion of complaints against councils in 2015/16

The Local Government Ombudsman upheld a greater proportion of complaints against local authorities in 2015/16, it has been revealed.

In its Annual Review of Local Government Complaints, the LGO said it had upheld 51% of detailed investigations during the year – up from 46% in 2014/15.

The Ombudsman was most likely to find fault in complaints about benefits and tax (64%), and least likely to find fault in complaints about highways and transport (40%).

According to the review, the LGO received 19,702 complaints and enquiries about local authorities in 2015/16, a similar level to the previous year.

It did, however, see a 13% increase in complaints and enquiries about education and children’s services.

During 2015/16, the Ombudsman made 3,529 recommendations to remedy injustice in total. These include 633 recommendations to prevent injustice for the wider public, such as through procedural changes and local authority staff training.

The review added that there were 255 investigations where the LGO agreed the local authority had satisfactorily remedied the injustice before the LGO became involved in the complaint.

Dr Jane Martin, Local Government Ombudsman, said: “We are publishing this report to demonstrate the scale of our work and provide an open resource to help others scrutinise local public services. While the number of complaints we receive is relatively small in comparison to the thousands of daily interactions between people and their councils, each complaint represents a problem that could not be resolved locally.

“I am pleased to provide more information this year about how complaints are decided and remedied. This demonstrates the impact our recommendations have for both the individual and the wider public, but also acknowledges where we agreed the local authority had remedied the complaint satisfactorily before it came to us. On the other hand, we upheld a higher proportion of detailed investigations, which may be a cause for concern if the trend continues.”