BackThe Annual Report describes the activity of the Ombudsman’s Office in a year in which 467 recommendations were made, 72.09 percent of which were accepted.
In 2014, the Ombudsman’s Office received 23,186 complaints. The issues that members of the public were most concerned about had to do with social affairs (minimum income, dependency benefits), problems concerning state, autonomous regional and local taxes, and delays in administering justice.
Added to that, the Office increased the number of own-initiative inquiries by 41% to as many as 489. Of particular note are the ones for including pupils with disability in the education system, the supervision of immigrant intake, problems to do with energy poverty, electricity power cuts and billing systems.
In 2014, the Office started a transparency portal containing details of budget management, wages, contracts, agreements and official trips. In addition, a new service was created that lets people check the status of their complaints on www.defensordelpueblo.es.
The Ombudsman believes that “transparency cannot be confined to showcasing its facts and figures”. Consequently, and to offer people the best possible service, the Office provides information about the steps taken and notifications lodged, the timescales and the outcome. For the first time, those data are provided in the Annual Report together with the average time the Office took to reply to citizens and the time employed by the regional governments to reply to the Office.
Highlights of last year’s report are – among others – the tax reform adopted in 2014, which included recommendations made by the Ombudsman’s Office, a case on cancer-related medication (i.e. when and how new innovative medication for treating cancer-related illnesses is expected to be made available) or recommendations made by the Ombudsman in order to raise awareness in international forums of the harm caused by terrorism.
To read the full press release on the Ombudsman’s Annual Report 2014, please see the PDF-File below or visit the Ombudsman’s website.
Source: Office of the Ombudsman, SPAIN
