Complaints about PHSO

The request was partially successful.

Dear Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman,

On your web page you provide details of how a complainant can complain about your service. You provide an email address:

[email address]

a telephone number:

0300 061 4076

and a fax number:

0300 061 4000

For each of the previous 12 months please provide:

1. the number of emails received at the above email address,
2. the number of telephone calls received on the above telephone number, and;
3. the number of faxes received on the above fax number.

Yours faithfully,

J Roberts

foiofficer, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Thank you for your e-mail to the Parliamentary and Health Service
Ombudsman. This return e-mail shows that we have received your
correspondence.

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All email communications with PHSO pass through the Government Secure
Intranet, and may be automatically logged, monitored and/or recorded for
legal purposes.
The MessageLabs Anti Virus Service is the first managed service to achieve
the CSIA Claims Tested Mark (CCTM Certificate Number 2006/04/0007), the UK
Government quality mark initiative for information security products and
services. For more information about this please visit www.cctmark.gov.uk

foiofficer, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Dear J Roberts

Your information request (FDN-192751)

I am writing further to your information request of 29 May 2014.

We are able to provide you with figures on the number of emails received at the complaintsaboutphso mailbox, but not for the two year period you request. We only hold information for a three-month period and I have provided this information below.

21 April 2014 to 30 April 2014 - 153
May 2014 - 352
1 June 2014 to 18 June 2014 – 226

We do not hold information about how many telephone calls or faxes were received by PHSO’s Review Team. Some relevant records would be held on individual case files but, as there is no way of determining which, we are not able to extract this information for you. The Review Team does keep a log of correspondence received, but this does not draw a distinction between types of correspondence, so would not help us to determine how many faxes were received. In addition, this list only captures correspondence which was correctly directed to the Review Team.

I am sorry I was not able to be more helpful.

Yours sincerely

FOI/DP Officer
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

show quoted sections

All email communications with PHSO pass through the Government Secure Intranet, and may be automatically logged, monitored and/or recorded for legal purposes.
The MessageLabs Anti Virus Service is the first managed service to achieve the CSIA Claims Tested Mark (CCTM Certificate Number 2006/04/0007), the UK Government quality mark initiative for information security products and services. For more information about this please visit www.cctmark.gov.uk

J Roberts left an annotation ()

I reckon that is 12.4 emails per day. If representative, that would give an annual figure of 4,526 emails sent to the complaintsaboutphso email address. Julie Mellor said on the Today programme that the PHSO investigates 4,000 cases a year but receives "few complaints about the quality of our decision making". It would appear that there are a lot of complaints.

[Name Removed] (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

"few complaints about the quality of our decision making". It would appear that there are a lot of complaints.....

And there are a lot of complainants who just get sick of having fought their way through the system and are brutally given the 'Push off..your case is rubbish - and we are not telling you why' letter.

Justified complainants must think 'Why on earth did I bother?' ..with this sort of response. Because the questions posed by the complaint are not even referred to - let alone addressed by the PHSO.

The huge majority will not see the PHSO as an organisation which has bothered to understand the complaint and provide a meaningful respose at this point .....and will give up and go away.