BackThe report, entitled Quality Counts, explains how the LGO exceeded its performance targets and improved quality standards, while continuing to reduce its operating costs.
The LGO completed 83% of cases within 13 weeks, 94% of cases within 26 weeks and 99% of cases within 52 weeks. Its operating budget has reduced from £16.8 million in 2010-11 to £11.2 million in 2014-15.
During the year the LGO continued to encourage learning from complaints by publishing the first ever sector wide reviews of complaints about local government and social care. Its Advisory Forum continued to provide insight direct from users of the LGO’s service, and a Councillor Forum was established to support greater local scrutiny of public services.
Along with colleagues at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), the LGO has led the debate on what a future ombudsman service should look like. A draft Bill proposing a reform of the public ombudsman landscape was confirmed in the Queen’s speech in May.
Local Government Ombudsman, Dr Jane Martin, said:
“Following the previous year of transformation at LGO, the past year has seen us focus on embedding quality further into our work. We have improved our service by completing more investigations more quickly, and listening to what our customers say by giving every person the chance to feed back on their experience.
“People can feel reassured that they have a fair and independent ombudsman that can put things right if they have been treated unfairly by a local authority or care provider, and which shares the lessons from complaints to avoid the same problems happening to others.”
The LGO registered more than 20,000 new complaints and enquiries in 2014-15, and more than 11,000 of these were considered further and a decision published. A detailed investigation was carried out in 4,780 of those cases.
The Annual Report and Accounts was laid in parliament on Tuesday 14 July.
You can view the entire report here.
Source: Office of the Ombudsperson, Canada
