| Local Government Ombudsman Watch Factsheet August 2007 www.ombudsmanwatch.org |
| Imagine you have suffered a significant injustice at the hands of a local council, which has been caused by administrative error, incompetence, or what seems like a stubborn refusal to read your correspondence and respond to it in a reasonable way. Perhaps you really have in fact already suffered such a misfortune. Sometimes councils refuse to admit error when they are obviously in the wrong, because the truth is too inconvenient, or too costly. When you find yourself on the receiving end of local authority bad practice that they refuse to acknowledge or put right, the consequence to you might well be great upset, inconvenience, worry and/or financial loss. You might have complained about council tax administration, or a planning permission, social services, neighbour nuisance, housing benefit or schooling issue - or an unfair parking ticket, or indeed anything that falls within the remit of a local authority's administrative activities. You have complained to the council, but they refuse to act, or refuse to admit error or fault, despite all the evidence. The council might claim to have 'lost' or 'never received' crucial correspondence. You have exhausted the council's complaints procedure. It seems that your only option now is to complain to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO), whose office advertises itself as an independent watchdog. Your hope might be that this office, funded by the taxpayer, will recognise the injustice you have suffered, and ask the council to put things right. However, would you be aware of the following facts about the LGO, on which you are now pinning all your hopes for justice? 1. All three current (2007) Local Government Ombudsmen were themselves previously Chief Executive Officers of local authorities. Therefore, the ombudsman's ruling on whether maladministration has been committed against you by your council will be by someone who himself/herself used to run a council that itself defended itself against complaints of maladministration. Would you feel confident about this person investigating your complaint impartially, just because s/he is now on the other side of the fence? 2. The Local Government Ombudsman finds maladministration in less than 2 % (yes - two per cent) of the complaints within jurisdiction that are submitted to him. This is far lower than the real level of maladministration in local government, yet maladministration cannot be reported as such in the media unless it is defined as such in a ruling by the LGO. The LGO is therefore causing a very significant under-reporting of maladministration, and allowing councils to give the impression of committing much less bad practice than is actually the case. Of course, politicians and local councils are often very happy that this status quo has thus far remain unchallenged. 3. The Local Government Ombudsman finds that the council was at fault in a further 21% or so of complaints within jurisdiction. In a 2005 Parliamentary Select Committee hearing, the ombudsman admitted that these 21% of cases are also cases of maladministration; however, the LGO does not report them as such, and so they are conveniently left out of the maladministration statistics. In fact, the LGO does not report them as 'administrative fault' at all: instead, he calls them 'local settlements'. This is where the LGO decides the council did something wrong, and asks the council to put it right. That might involve the council being asked to pay a woefully inadequate sum in compensation, when one considers the suffering and inconvenience that has been caused to the complainant. The complainant can refuse to accept the sum in compensation, but cannot refuse the 'local settlement': it is still reported as such by the LGO, and the case is closed. Surely a strange kind of 'settlement', this, where only one of the two disputing parties agrees to it, and it is imposed by a third party. 4. The Local Government Ombudsman used to commission its own MORI Customer Satisfaction Surveys, (1995 and 1999). The results of these surveys were similar, and the files were available on the LGO website if you looked for them. Very interesting they were, too, for those curious enough to read these lengthy documents. The 1999 survey exposed that 73% of complainants (within jurisdiction) were dissatisfied with the outcome of their complaint to the LGO. Not only that, but even around 50% of those whose complaints were upheld with a finding of maladministration were dissatisfied. So the LGO cannot with integrity pretend that the dissatisfaction statistics just represented complainants whose complaints had been rejected. Something more serious is obviously wrong. 5. After Local Government Ombudsman Watch exposed the fact that the LGO was condemned by its own MORI polls, these MORI polls were curiously discontinued by the Local Government Ombudsman, and replaced by a different poll that included far fewer participants, and that excluded the questions about customer satisfaction that had produced such embarrassing statistics. 6. Many of the LGO's Investigators previously worked in local government. The LGO has been asked how many of his staff previously worked in local government, but he has refused to answer, saying it would be too onerous to research this. One might perhaps wonder just how difficult it would be to send an e-mail to his 220 or so investigators asking them to respond by clicking on a button to say whether or not they used to work in local government; or how long it would take an administrative assistant to research this by looking in Human Resources files. If you were taking a complaint against, say, the Police to a publicly-funded outfit that claimed to be independent, would you expect the investigator appointed to be a former police officer, and the final adjudicator to be a former police chief constable? Should we not have similar expectations from our publicly-funded local government 'watchdog'? 7. If you disagree with the LGO's finding after investigating your complaint, your only recourse is to seek a judicial review of the decision. If you do so, your chances of success are minimal, and you may end up with hefty costs to meet. It is very, very rare for judges to find against an ombudsman. Even if they do, they only have the authority to ask the LGO to go back and have another look at the case; and the LGO may well do so, and still decide to stick with his original decision. So it is crucial that any local government watchdog is committed to fairness and objectivity. There is much more evidence of the social harm caused by the Local Government Ombudsman's office, and how its leniency towards bad councils actively encourages bad practice on www.ombudsmanwatch.org , at www.psow.co.uk and at http://lgowatcher.blogspot.com/ . Local Government Ombudsman Watch has been campaigning since 2003 for better local government accountability, and more truthful reporting of maladministration. Time after time, people have contacted LGOWatch to complain about how the LGO has found in favour of their council despite overwhelming and watertight evidence of maladministration. The information above perhaps sheds more than ample light on why such perverse decisions are reached. The abolition of the Local Government Ombudsman, which has far too cosy and partial a relationship with local councils, and its replacement with a truly independent local government complaints commission, where no commissioner previously worked as a council CEO, will be a very positive change for the better. It will encourage councils to avoid maladministration, because for the first time, they will have something to fear when citizens threaten to complain to the local government watchdog. This will serve the citizen well, and will also have the effect of boosting the standing and reputation of local councils, as the new accountability will inspire more confidence and trust in local government among the communities it serves. The fact also deserves acknowledgement here that many local authority employees are decent, thorough and conscientious people. Furthermore, a minority of members of the public can be gratuitously offensive, unreasonable and vexatious when dealing with council officers, who may be doing their best to execute their duties in a professional and reasonable manner, sometimes in circumstances with a heavy workload and modest remuneration in view of the importance of the work they are doing. Council officers may also be under pressure to take instructions from senior staff with which they do not necessarily agree. Council staff deserve fair play and decent treatment, just as much as the members of the public they serve. However, bad practice - termed 'maladministration' in the Local Government Ombudsman's ('LGO's) literature, even if it is disguised in their reports - still happens. Anyone can make a mistake, but so long as there is a willingness to recognise this and put it right, things generally move in the right direction. The Local Government Ombudsman remains a major obstacle. Gary Powell LGOWatch Please note that receipt of this factsheet, or its inclusion in any communication, whether in full text or as a hyperlink, does not necessarily imply that the author of this factsheet endorses the content of any communication in which the factsheet/hyperlink appears, or endorses any campaign associated with that communication, or that the author of this factsheet necessarily has any knowledge of its inclusion or distribution. Only communications received directly from Gary Powell may correctly claim to be sent or published by Local Government Ombudsman Watch, or to have the endorsement of Local Government Ombudsman Watch. LGOWatch is opposed to discrimination in all its forms, including, but not limited to, discrimination with regard to race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, socioeconomic status, marital status, language, disability, or immigration status. © Gary Powell, Local Government Ombudsman Watch, 2007. 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