Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman annual report reveals leap in complaints upheld after detailed investigation

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has published its Annual Report and Accounts for the period April 2022 – March 2023, which reveals that the service upheld 74% (3,203 in number) of the complaints in which it carried out a detailed investigation.

This compares to 66% (2,825 in number) of complaints upheld by the Ombudsman in the same period from 2021 – 2022.

There was also a rise in the number of complaints taken to a detailed investigation (4,301 up from 4,253 in 2021-22) achieved despite a reduction in headcount due to a self-implemented recruitment freeze.

In comparison with the previous year, the Ombudsman received 2% fewer complaints (16,570 down from 16,946), decided on 3% fewer of these cases (16,963 down from 17,534), performed an initial check on 3% fewer cases (6457 down from 6674), begun an initial investigation into 6% fewer cases (6,205 down from 6607) but proceeded to a detailed investigation on 1% more cases (4,301 up from 4253) and, as mentioned, increased the uphold rate by 8% (74% from 66%).

The Ombudsman said its investigations saw councils and care providers agree to make 2,578 service improvement recommendations – the highest number ever recorded.

The report highlights the key achievements of the Ombudsman this year as:

• Executing our savings plan to retain staff expertise and protect the quality of our service, in response to a real terms cut to our budget
• Rising to the challenge of a recruitment freeze by improving the timeliness of investigations despite managing a 10% reduction in headcount within the year
• Reducing completion times on initial investigations, giving the public quicker decisions on whether we will look at their complaint
• Maintaining excellent results in our latest staff survey, with 80% telling us we are a great place to work

The risks to the Ombudsman are considered to be:

• Without being properly resourced, our ability to offer a high quality service is severely constrained if we receive an increase in complaints registered with us
• Our legislative powers to investigate are not updated to prevent them falling further behind the way modern public services are delivered, which results in increasing numbers of legal challenges to our decisions.

Chief Executive and Accounting Officer, Nigel Ellis, said he was “pleased to report that despite the difficult environment we worked in, our investigations improved services for many more people than before, providing even better value for the public purse.

"We also completed more than half of our cases within 20 working days. This is a fantastic achievement because we know how important it is for people to have certainty as soon as possible on whether we will look into their concerns in more detail.

"Yet we achieved these results while having to subsume rising costs within a static operating budget. This saw us introduce a recruitment freeze leading to a 10% reduction in headcount within the year.”

Harry Rodd

A full breakdown of the categories dealt with by the Ombudsman is available here: