LGOWatch
MORI SURVEY EXPOSES 73% PUBLIC DISSATISFACTION RATE WITH
THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT OMBUDSMAN

In 1999, MORI conducted a customer satisfaction survey on behalf of the Commission for
Local Administration in England (CLAE), which provides the Local Government
Ombudsman ‘service’. (The last survey of this kind had been conducted in 1995.) The
complainants included in the sample were taken from a Local Government Database of
cases on which a decision had been made in 1998. Click here for the whole report.

The report states:

‘Overall, almost 3 in 4 complainants are dissatisfied with the outcome of their complaint,
including around half of the small number who obtained a decision of maladministration
causing injustice. This is broadly similar to the satisfaction ratings recorded in the 1995
survey.’ (Page 37, ‘Satisfaction with Outcome’.)

In fact, of the 73% of dissatisfied complainants, 61% described themselves as ‘very
dissatisfied’ with the final outcome of the complaint.

It is perhaps hardly surprising for individuals to be dissatisfied with the outcome of any
process that does not go their way, regardless of the objective merits or demerits of their
case, if they perceived subjectively they had a case. However, it should be borne in mind
that the Ombudsman’s procedures do not allow acceptance of a complaint as worthy of
investigation unless he admits there is a prima facie case to answer of maladministration
with injustice, and he requests copies of correspondence to and from local councils
before making this decision: so ‘weak’ or inappropriate cases are meant to be filtered out
by this process from the outset. This high dissatisfaction rate should therefore give one
pause. Furthermore, the MORI report states that even about 50% of those who obtained a
decision of maladministration with injustice in their favour were dissatisfied with the final
outcome of their complaint. Such a high dissatisfaction rate amongst both successful and
unsuccessful complainants is a matter of very serious concern.

The MORI survey revealed particular concern with regard to the perceived fairness and
logic of the Ombudsman’s conclusions. In response to the question ‘Overall, how would
you rate the letters and/or reports that were sent by the Ombudsman’, 57% regarded the
fairness of his conclusions as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’, and 55% regarded their logic as ‘poor’
or ‘very poor’, (page 23, Question 29.). The MORI report reflects on such findings as
follows:

‘...although the Ombudsman service is rated well in terms of staff and clarity of information,
on those areas of greater importance such as understanding the complaint or fairness, the
rating is much less positive.’ (Page 62)

Despite the damning outcome of the MORI survey, the method by which the final sample of
complainants in the 1999 study was selected is also perhaps less than confidence-
inspiring and might have deliberately excluded complainants who felt a justifiable and
strong grievance against the Ombudsman’s office in respect of the outcome of their
complaint. On page (i) of the report, we are told:

‘ Before commencing fieldwork these names (from the initially selected sample – GJP)
were screened for complainants who might have been emotionally unsettled or abusive if
contacted, were known to have moved or were not private individuals, and around 10%
were removed from the sample.’ (My emphasis.)

This seems extraordinary: 10% is surely a significant proportion of a sample to exclude
from the survey. How did MORI come to conclude that individuals might have been
‘emotionally unsettled’ or ‘abusive’? Did they employ psychologists and graphologists to
analyse the complainants’ handwriting? Or were they advised by the Ombudsman’s office
that these people were not to be contacted because they were psychologically unstable or
abusive? If so, what kind of objectivity is that...and what kind of story might they have had
to tell, those people who had perhaps ended up discharging their emotions, frustrations
and anger in letters and ‘phone calls to the Ombudsman? Perhaps they were some of the
very people the MORI researchers needed to be interviewing, and who the Ombudsman’s
office would rather they did not.

The report states:

‘Around half the complainants say they would take another complaint to the Ombudsman.
However, half of those dissatisfied with the outcome say they would not, mostly thinking it
a waste of time and that nothing would be achieved.’ It goes on to say that 60% of the
complainants in the sample who said they would not go to the Ombudsman again
described the institution as a ‘waste of money’. (Page 52.)