Up to 80 or 90 separate issues within one single complaint

The request was successful.

Dear Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman,

In response to a question from William Wragg (Q6), Amanda Amroliwala disclosed:

''We can have up to 80 or 90 separate issues within one single complaint, so we might investigate and uphold a large number of those individual issues, but not some of them. That is still counted as partly upheld in the same way that another report that might only uphold one very small aspect is also counted. It is very difficult to distinguish between the two.That is why we are trying to pull the figures apart and think about what the public would like to understand from our investigations and how we make surewe give that.'

In 'Complaints about UK Government Departments and agencies and other public organisations 2018-19' the number of complaints partly upheld was 36:

https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/sites/defau...

Please provide the total number of separate issues within these 36 complaints.

Yours faithfully,

J Roberts

InformationRights, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

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InformationRights, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Dear J Roberts

Our reference: FOI98
Your request for information

Thank you for your email of 28 November 2020, via whatdotheyknow.com, in which you requested information from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Your request has been handled in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We sincerely apologise for the delay in responding to your request.

Your request:
"In 'Complaints about UK Government Departments and agencies and other public organisations 2018-19' the number of complaints partly upheld was 36...Please provide the total number of separate issues within these 36 complaints."

Our response:
The figure of 36 partly upheld complaints quoted in your email and the document on our website does not relate to 36 partly upheld complaints (cases) as such but rather to numbers of organisations investigated (as a complaint can and often does deal with multiple organisations). The actual number of Parliamentary complaints which were partly upheld in 2018/19 was 35 (some of which involved more than one organisation). Between these 35 partly upheld complaints there were a total of 64 complaint parts/keywords present. The most keywords present on a single case was eight.

We hope that this information is useful.

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Yours sincerely

Freedom of Information/Data Protection Team
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
E: [PHSO request email]
W: www.ombudsman.org.uk

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J Roberts left an annotation ()

It appears that 'separate issues' is synonomous with 'complaint parts/keywords'. It would be interesting to know all of the keywords. But can there really be at least 90 different keywords that could be extracted from a computer search of one case record?

Thirty-five complaints had 64 parts/keywords and the complaint with the most parts/keywords had eight. An average of just under two.

This part of the response puzzles me:

'The figure of 36 partly upheld complaints quoted in your email and the document on our website does not relate to 36 partly upheld complaints (cases) as such but rather to numbers of organisations investigated (as a complaint can and often does deal with multiple organisations)'

If you, for example, look at the Home Office figures in the table you see the figure of 11 in the main row (highlighted in green). Underneath you can see the figures of 1 (Border Force) and 10 (UK Visas and Immigration). But according to the response, it would be be incorrect to add the 1 and the 10 together to make 11 complaints. According to the response, the 1 and the 10 add up to 11 organisations.

liz perloff left an annotation ()

I’m a little bit confused by PHSO’s continued use of ‘counting in complicated ways’

In no other mathematical system does 36 equal 35.

If the numbers of assessments, investigations etc published by PHSO are contradicted by PHSO, often on the same page.

How can the public have faith that PHSO are doing the work they are paid to do?

J Roberts left an annotation ()

'How can the public have faith that PHSO are doing the work they are paid to do?'

The reliability of PHSO statistics has been questioned for years.

Here is something I previously wrote:

"Dr Bruce Newsome shoots to bits PHSO figures in his latest hard-hitting article entitled: 'letting another quango mislead parliament?'

https://thecritic.co.uk/why-is-the-gover...

'The PHSO investigated 30.6 percent fewer cases in 2019-2020 compared to the preceding year, even though enquiries fell by 7.4 percent. Yet, the PHSO misreported 13 percent more enquiries, as recently as August this year.'

'The PHSO refused to quantify the reduction of demand in the final six months. The PHSO’s communications with me on these issues were confusing. Its first excuse was that the person responsible for that part of the report separated from the PHSO. Another excuse was that the National Audit Office hadn’t asked for clarification or correction of that part of the report. In the end, it went back to its claim that because its metrics changed in November 2019 it could not be expected to quantify the subsequent fall in demand .'"

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/e...

(comment of 10/9/20)

J Roberts left an annotation ()

PHSOtheFACTS have crunched the numbers in PHSO data tables:

https://phsothetruestory.com/phso-data-t...

'The number of upheld complaints falls from 3.1% to 2.1% in the red figures, which are a percentage of total complaints made. The number of investigations reported on falls from 8.2% of all complaints to just 3.6%. Because fewer investigations were carried out (2,676 down to 1,122) the percentage of upheld investigations rises from 37.5% to 58%. (green figures). If you get past the 7-day purge and receive an assessment of your complaint, you have approximately 20% chance of some form of positive outcome.'

J Roberts left an annotation ()

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Scrutiny 2019–20

HC 843 Published on 25 January 2021

'21. There is also confusion about how many new complaints the PHSO has received in the financial year. The PHSO’s annual report and accounts asserts that in total the PHSO “handled 30,895 complaints compared with 29,841 last year”. This included cases recorded in the previous year and new complaints recorded in 2020 (28,103).24 However, this information explains only how many complaints were handled; it provides no information on how many complaints have actually been received in total in the financial year. Indeed, in his letter of 12 October 2020, Rob Behrens said the PHSO had in fact received 31,365 new complaints in that financial year. Amanda Amroliwala confirmed this was another area that the PHSO was looking at when examining the data provided in the annual report and accounts.

22. The PHSO should report in its annual report and accounts the number of new enquiries and complaints that have been received in that financial year. This number is separate from the number of enquiries and complaints that the PHSO has “handled” in that same financial year.'

https://committees.parliament.uk/publica...