Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman publishes 2007-08 Annual Report and Three Year Strategic Plan

Last updated:05 February 2009

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has published its Annual Report in a climate of increasing demand for legitimate redress in the complaints handling process of public institutions. The report contains a forward from Ann Abraham, statistics and analysis relating to complaints and 21 case studies of effective complaints handling.

In the perceived absence of effective internal complaints handling mechanisms in our public institutions as identified in the Public Administration Select Committee report When Citizens Complain: Ombudsmen may be in pole position to reap the benefit of the growing political capital in engaging the public in service improvement.

A new era of collaboration has seen the implementation of a Regulatory Reform Order enabling the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and Local Government Ombudsmen to work together when a complaint overlaps into the domain of both. In addition, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg has encouraged Ombudsmen to co-operate more efficiently with each other and his office, thus enhancing their potential influence. Put into context with the precedent set by the Court of Appeal’s judgement in February 2008 – that Ministers must have ‘due regard’ to the Ombudsman’s findings; these developments constitute a consolidation of the Ombudsman’s position as the most legitimate handler of public complaints.

The recently published Three Year Strategic Plan: 2008-11 outlines the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s aspiration to be “recognised as the authority on good administration and good complaint handling” and aims to see that “specific policies are informed by [its] work” amongst other strategic objectives.

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