Accountability

Very good question. I tried to find this out through my then MP, who got nowhere with them. In my exoerience these people are accountable to absolutely nobody at all and there is no way of correcting, rectifying or disputing what they might write or do without recourse to very expensive legal action i.e. a judicial review. Which takes them neatly round in a very profitable circle, of course. Being accountable to nobody means that there's no need at all to be inconvenienced by anything like accuracy, or good hard work, and appears to allow full concentration on milking the system instead, in every way possible. However, let's see what the official answer is.

I know what the answer will be from a similar request by the same person to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

"We are accountable to Parliament through our annual reports."

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ac...

Unfortunately they produce their own annual reports which means their 'so called' accountability is nothing more than self assessment. The LGO's accountability is nothing but an illusion as is the justice they are supposed to deliver.

There is no independent audit of what Public Service Ombudsmen state in their annual reports and the true position.

The LGO even manipulated their last customer satisfaction survey by removing some 14% of the dissatisfied customers MORI wanted to approach.

Self assessment was rightly discredited years ago as an appropriate means of accountability.

"In terms of decisions made on complaints, the Ombudsmen can only be challenged in court, by judicial review."

Unlike a proper appeal a judicial reviews do not allow findings of fact to be challenged.

"The Local Government Act 1974, which set up the Local Government Ombudsman's service, sets out other ways in which the Ombudsmen are accountable.

They are required to produce an Annual Report, and this is now laid before Parliament."

All that means is that they are accountable if they fail to produce a report not their investigative failures.

"They can be asked to appear before the CLG Select Committee, on matters relating to how they operate as LGOs."

All that means is they may be asked to answer questions by a select committee, the select committee can't, and has proved in the past, that they can't hold the LGO to account for their investigative failures.

"They have to publish Annual Accounts."

All that means is they are accountable should they not produce an annual account.

"Issues of misconduct are covered by the Code of Conduct for Commission Members which makes reference to the seven principles of public life as set out by the Nolan Committee. An Ombudsman can be removed from office by Her Majesty “on grounds of incapacity or misbehaviour” (Section 23(6) of the Local Government Act 1974)."

All that means is that they can be removed if they do something like fiddle their expenses or are found guilty of a serious criminal offence. I am not aware of any commissioner being removed from office because they don't do their job.

From the LGO's response it is clear they are not accountable for any dodgy finding of facts whilst investigating a complaint or for allowing councils to get away with serious acts of maladministration by locally settling them.

I was personally contacted and asked if my husband and I would be part of their 1999 Customer satisfaction survey. Once they realised we would be giving a very negative response we were excluded. Since then they have excluded a greater percentage of people with every subsequent survey. A few years later they have reached the stage of excluding some 18% of customers from their customer satisfaction surveys. We will have to wait and see how many customers were excluded from their most recent but as yet unpublished survey.