LGOWatch
Of the 11,369 complaints submitted that he said he could
investigate in 2004/5, the Local Government Ombudsmen
in England reported that only 195 cases (1.7 %)
represented maladministration by local government.

There were however a further 2,875 cases (27%) of
maladministration that he reported merely as 'local
settlement'.

Maladministration with injustice had occurred in all these
cases, either because the LGO has found it according to
his published definitions, or else because the council had
changed its mind during the investigation and voluntarily
offered a remedy after previously rejecting the complaint.

This means that for every case of local government
maladministration that the Ombudsman reported in
2003/4, there were by his own admission 13 cases of
maladministration that he did not report as such. There
are of course in addition the many valid complaints of
maladministration that the LGO rejects because of his
pro-council bias.

If the Ombudsman does not report a case as
maladministration, neither will the media, sparing local
councils the kind of media attention that upholds
democratic accountability and ensures transparency.

The Local Government Ombudsman is surely the Council's
best friend.

(In 2003/4, there were 11,600 complaints submitted that
the LGO said he could investigate, and he reported that  
only 180 cases (1.6 %) represented maladministration by
local government. There were however a further 3,368
cases (29%) of maladministration that he reported
merely as 'local settlement'. There is suspiciously little
change in LGO Report statistics from year to year.)