LOCAL GOVERNMENT OMBUDSMAN'S OWN MORI SURVEY REVEALS 73% DISSATISFACTION RATE WITH HIS SERVICE.
In 1999, MORI conducted a customer satisfaction survey on behalf of the Commission for Local Administration in England, (i.e. the Local Government Ombudsman). 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. The whole report is available here.
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.
The Ombudsman’s procedures do not allow acceptance of a complaint as worthy of investigation unless 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 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 many of these were apparently deemed 'emotionally unsettled' or potentially 'abusive'? Who told MORI know that these individuals might have been ‘emotionally unsettled’ or ‘abusive’? The Ombudsman or his staff? What right did they have to exclude interviewees from the poll on the basis of such a subjective judgement? How did this serve the interests of objectivity in the poll? Was it not likely that those screened out were people who had strong feelings about unjust treatment from the LGO? Did this not give the LGO an opportunity to screen out critics and unfairly influence the poll? Even if the individuals were emotionally unsettled, did they not deserve a telephone call like everyone else polled, to ask them their opinion about the service they had received? Even if they were abusive, could the MORI researcher not simply have put down the telephone after calling them? Perhaps these excluded individuals 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.)
LGOWatch anticipated another MORI poll in 2003/4, (the other two being published in 1995 and 1999). However, it has been replaced by a Public Awareness Survey with no Customer Satisfaction Survey to expose the Ombudsman's shortcomings again. An organisation that responds to such clear condemnation by the people who use it by discontinuing its customer satisfaction poll instead of addressing the problems exposed by it, simply betrays its lack of commitment to the standards expected by the public.