24 July 2008

Mr T Thomas

Via email ([FOI #1238 email])

Our ref: CS/08/0026/HJP

(Please quote our reference when contacting us)

If telephoning contact Hilary Pook on 020 7217 4734

or if using email send to: [email address]

Dear Mr Thomas

Request for information

You asked in your email of 20 July, for each of the three Ombudsmen, the number of different citizens who had submitted complaints during the last reporting period.

You say you are aware of the total number of complaints submitted. (This was 17,628 in 2007/08.) You say that you want to know the number of individual citizens who submitted cases to the Ombudsmen irrespective of how many different complaint numbers were assigned to their cases. You say that we count some complaints more than once due to the way we record our statistics.

When someone makes a complaint to the Ombudsman and they have not already complained to the council, the Ombudsman terminates the case and puts the complaint to the council to deal with. If the complainant is not satisfied with the outcome of the council's handling of the case, the complainant can complain to the Ombudsman again, and - yes - that complaint will be given a new complaint number.

However, some complainants make more than one complaint in one reporting period - that is, they make different complaints about different matters (and sometimes different councils) to the Ombudsman. So to give you just the number of individual people who had made complaints to the Ombudsmen in a year would be misleading. It would also be very difficult to extract that figure from our database.

But, we do keep a record of the complaints that have originally be terminated as `premature' (ie the complainant has not already complained to the council) and that the complainant complains to the Ombudsman about again, after the council has looked at it. The number of such cases in 2007/08 was 1,646 overall. Some of the premature complaints associated with these `resubmitted' cases will have been received in 2006/07, but if we subtract these complaints from the total number of complaints received in 2007/08, this gives a good indication of the number of complaints received without the `double counting' you refer to. By Ombudsman's team, the figures are:

That concludes my response and I hope you find the information useful. If you feel I have not dealt properly with your request, you have the right to appeal and, should you wish to do so, I can supply a copy our internal complaints procedure. You also have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner to determine whether your request has been properly dealt with. You should note however that the Commissioner will not consider any complaint where you have not first exhausted our internal complaints process or where there has been undue delay in contacting him. You will be able to obtain further details of the Information Commissioner's role from the website on www.ico.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely

Hilary Pook (Ms)

Communications and Records Manager

LGO 01 (03/08)