[Nick Beale]

Since I'm lucky enough to have both the Scrutiny Officer and Ombudsman Link Officer roles, I guess I'd better respond ...

The Ombudsman publishes an Annual Digest of Cases which discusses salient cases by service area. These cases are selected for the lessons they can offer to other authorities. I distribute copies of the digest to my complaints contacts in the service Directorates and they take it from there. We bring the school appeals ones to our Panel members at their training sessions, for example.

Maladministration findings are reported to Cabinet and Standards Committee but these are very rare.

I produce an annual report to our Standards Committee on the cases over the last year and their outcomes. These are broken down by service area and geography with comparative figures for previous years. I also produce a population weighted table of complaints per 10,000 people in each district area, which gives a bit of perspective on the raw figures. This all goes to show that people get most upset about anything to do wiith their children, elderly relatives and car parking but there's no consistent geographical pattern or peak season for complaining that I can spot.

Finally, the Ombudsman sends each council an annual letter about her dealings with them in the past year, and that also goes to the Standards Committee.

I've never seen enough of a pattern in any of this to suggest a worthwhile scrutiny topic. Complaints come from people who didn't get what they wanted, which is not the same as the authority doing anything wrong. The things they complain abotu are the things most dear to them, understandably. Look at the Ombudsman's annual stats on her website and you'll see that actual maladminsitration findings are barely 2% of total complaints. Local settlements are higher but not all of those entail a council being in the wrong - some are just a way to resolve an apparent impasse.

[David Collins]

Like Nick, I used to perform both roles. The Ombudsman's Annual Report is always an interesting read but trying to pick out any trends from one or maybe two upheld complaints proved little value so we no longer take it to scrutiny. The natural urge is to go straight to the "league table" to see if we got less complaints than our neighbours.

I tend to echo all of Nick's comments.