 Good morning everyone and welcome to the fourth meeting of the local Government Cunity Committee in 2018, because I remind everyone present to turn off mobile phones and as MSPs, meeting papers are providing a digital format, tablets may be used by members during the meeting, so that's what you she's doing and we promise that's why we've got our laptops or phone sounds. We have one apology this morning, unfortunately, where Deputy Gwzell Monica Lennon can't be with us so we put her apologies on record this morning and we moved to agenda item one, which is Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and report 2016-17. The committee will take evidence on that report and we welcome Rosemary Agnew, our new ombudsman, and Nicky McLean director. John Stevenson, head of improvement engagement and standards SPSO, thank you Mr Stevenson for coming along as well. Ms Agnew, I believe that you have an opening statement before we move to questions. It's very short, I promise. I just wanted to put in perspective why we submitted the briefing note that we submitted to you. Given the title of this was the 16-17 annual report, I'm conscious that I'm here representing for a year where I wasn't the ombudsman, so what we tried to do was give you a flavour of movement since that last annual report. In terms of answering your questions, I'm very happy to take any of them, but if there are specific things about the annual report last year, particularly in terms of some of the numbers and performance against indicators, I'm very likely to ask Nicky to comment, but equally, I'm very happy to take supplementary questions about what we're doing in the current year, because I'm conscious that we're in the final quarter of one year when we're talking about a year that's gone by. The one other thing that I would say is that we've tried to be completely open about where we are because what you'll be aware of from committee meetings like this is that in public life ombudsman commissioners, we're really good at saying that volumes are really high, we can't cope, we haven't got enough resources. What we've tried to do is give you a flavour of where we have got enough, where we haven't got enough and what we feel the impact of that is in the wider context, not just about complaints, but also our other statutory functions, Scottish welfare fund, complaint standards and public sector improvement generally. Thank you for inviting us and I look forward to the questions. Thank you very much and I think that the committee will try and get a balance between having a look back at the annual report and teasing out how you might take the office forward in the year ahead. I'm sure we'll do that. On that note, can we go to our first question from Graham Simpson, MSP? Thanks for coming this morning. I just wonder if you could give us a sense of how you're doing things differently from the previous occupant of the job, what things have you changed? I don't think that it's wholesale difference. There are two or three significant things. One is, as you'll see from the briefing, we took an opportunity to eliminate our backlog of cases and for the first six months that really was the main operational focus, not simply because of it's unacceptable to have a backlog of cases, but equally important is the impact on the well-being of my office in that it can be really draining on you to know that you have this. That was the first significant thing. As a result of that, there were other areas of work that we perhaps didn't do as much of in communications and engagement that we intend to build on. So, a different approach to communication, we've just appointed a new communications manager and I want to take a much more balanced approach to not just how we get the SPSO out there but also what our role is in relation to public service improvement, not just drawing on complaints but also practice. That's the second significant thing. We've just submitted to the corporate body for consultation a draft strategy. It's essentially about the same functions but making it much clearer that complaints are important in relation to public service improvement, but so is all the other work that we do. One of the things that's easy in terms of perception of Ombudsman is to think that we just look at complaints and actually we do far more. The third area of building on that is continuing the work on learning and improvement to start being more structured about how we gather our own intelligence and how we use that to inform wider debate. Nicky now represents the Health Improvement Scotland Intelligence Group and we can share information. I say that wider context because I think it's really important that we put this in perspective. What we learn from our work is the tip of the iceberg. John Lennon learns from the standards work by having engagement with complaint handlers across Scotland and what we learn from statistics. We can contribute to a wider debate, so it may well be that we have a particular organisation who are, I don't know, five per cent of all our complaints. Is that a big issue? It might be when we discuss and have this wider engagement it may turn out that it's just us and actually there's some help and support they need in complaints training. It may be through, if it's a health complaint for example, through the engagement that Nicky has, that there are other issues that are arising. It's really about raising our game from simply looking at ourselves to using what we know as part of that wider public debate and look at service improvement generally. I think that you're right to say that most people would just assume that you are there to deal with complaints but you see yourself as doing far more than that. Perhaps we can get on record what you think your role is beyond just dealing with complaints. I think that I should just emphasise that complaints are really important. Personal redress for injustice caused through things that go wrong is really important and it doesn't diminish that in any way but I think our wider contribution is through sharing our intelligence as far as we can with our own information. It's through developing our own learning improvement work such a way that we have earlier intervention with public bodies if we think that there is an issue in complaint handling or we find that there is something that appears to us to be thematic coming through the recommendations that we make on decisions. It's also wider if we see that there are issues that we think are worthy of more investigation in terms of research like we did with the informed consent thematic report. It is about drawing attention to those and also engaging ourselves much more if we can with our service users. It's a combination of complaints, sharing intelligence and contributing to other work using our own intelligence for earlier support and intervention and better engagement with all our stakeholders. You say that you have appointed someone to take on a communications role. Who do you think that you need to communicate with? Everybody. For ombudsman type organisations the temptation is to focus everything you do on your website and say we'll get guidance, we'll get publications out and it's almost like a drive to get stuff out there. What I really want to do is turn this on its head and look at how we can take SPSO to stakeholders because we don't have a particularly diverse complainer profile and I'm interested in knowing why. Traditional feedback routes like feedback forms, we're seeing across the public sector I think that response rates are going down and we need to know not just whether people are happy with our service but where they think we're making a difference and if we're not why we're not. I think it's really important that we have contact with public bodies themselves because if we help them either through training support or more robust discussion shall we say to improve their complaint handling then that is to everybody's benefit because the best learning, the best complaint handling is at front line because that's where we achieve lasting change. I also think it's really important that we communicate with the wider ombudsman and public sector community so we're quite active through the ombudsman association and through that with European ombudsman because we do a lot of quite innovative work in Scotland. Nicky and the others in the office were instrumental in the ombudsman association service standards and one of the areas that I'm particularly interested in making sure that Scotland does not lose its identity because of everything else going on in the UK and Europe that we retain that and we retain our reputation for our innovation for pushing forward on particularly on engagement and how we include users. We have things like sounding boards and user forums which many ombudsmen don't do. Equally it's important because we learn from other ombudsmen so one of the things that is very apparent to me is that as an ombudsman service we're really good, we're creative, we're innovative and we do I think very well for our complainers. In some aspects of our service we are lagging behind and this ties in with this wider issue of how do we contribute to learning and engagement in a wider context and one of the big differences and it's with the exception of Northern Ireland it's UK wide we only investigate what's brought to us because that's what our legislation says. Most Western European ombudsmen in terms of their basic model is they also have powers to go and investigate things that they think need investigating. Now we can research things but having the investigatory powers actually gives you the ability to get information in a different way. Now currently we've put a submission to that to the Scottish Government. Northern Ireland ombudsman has these powers. The Welsh ombudsman is in the process of being part of a bill going through the Welsh Assembly but what we've learned from our colleagues is that a lot of deep-rooted systemic improvement comes from these type of investigations. They're not commonly used, they're used quite sparingly. So in that context I think there are elements of what we do that I would like to modernise and it's important that we are part of that network as well. Thanks very much and so you've covered this kind of own initiative question. I think other members of the panel might have questions on that. It's almost as if we'd planned this, Ms Agnew, isn't it? I know some members have questions on that and other members have questions about learning and improvement and driving that forward so we'll maybe have a look at both of those next. I think that Mr Whiteman had a line of inquiry in relation to that initiative. Yes, a few things here. I was interested in that question and looking at your statutory powers it says quite clearly that you cannot investigate any matter in respect to which a complaint has not been made. You need a complaint. People who complain tend to be not everyone complains, as is a general rule, but a lot of people don't feel that they should complain. You mentioned about the diversity of people who are coming to you. What steps are you taking to try and encourage people that this isn't about complaints in the everyday sense of the word, that this is about holding to account public services that are paid for by us all and should operate to high standards? It's a really tricky one. I have the advantage of having been Information Commissioner before I was ombudsman and had exactly the same issue. What I have learned through this is that the phrases that you often hear are, we need to target hard to reach groups, we need to see why there aren't, why it would target vulnerable groups and actually I think it's more fundamental than that. We need to understand why vulnerable groups don't complain because there is an assumption that if services are not going well then we have to complain about them. Often not complaining about them can be down to a different route into engagement with public services. The first thing that I want to do properly is understand why different groups don't engage with us because there may be other reasons. A good example is that we get very little from female prisoners. Now why is that? If I talk to the prison service they will say it's because there's a different sort of engagement internally and so we approach things in different ways and have a different relationship with the prisoners but whilst I have no reason to doubt them what I don't have is the ability to really test that. So the year of young people, why is it that if we can have complaints from children and young people we don't get them and we don't get many on their behalf? Now it may well be because it's a different sort of engagement with public services but I don't know. What I want to try and reassure myself about is not that the complaints are made to us but that the grievances that people might have are properly addressed. It may just be in some groups that public bodies are really good at looking at those complaints. So I'd say that our first part of this journey is to really understand the why because when we understand the why we can then actually look at targeting. I will say this because you wouldn't expect somebody sitting in my seat, not to. It does also come down to resources. This learning improvement, targeting, communication and engagement work takes resources and it is the most poorly funded part of what we do. We do a lot with what we have but it's part of our functions where we could do as much as you funded us for and do it well. That's very helpful perhaps to clear an interest as a member of the Scottish Parliament to corporate body, which funds your office. You say in your briefing that sometimes you get complaints that you can't then follow through because you no longer have contact with a complainant and that would be an perhaps an obvious area where you think there is a substantive complaint but you can't do anything about it. What kind of other circumstances would you see own initiative powers being useful in? My word. How long is a piece of string? If we start with the complaints that for whatever reason we can't look at because we're drawn, lose contact, they are particularly if there's a public interest issue there, the first thing. The other is it may be through themes and areas that we identify in our own work. I would always envisage there being some form of preliminary scoping work because there has to be a business case to do these so that might be things that emerge from our own work. It might be things that people bring to us. They don't personally have a complaint or want to make a complaint but they are aware of an issue so they may bring something to us. It may be something that another stakeholder raises. It might actually be a gap. It might be why don't we get complaints from this? Why isn't there public attention on a particular area? I think that the crucial thing is in the way that this is set up and implemented. If I look at other ombudsmen, for example, they will have some form of basic criteria. There has to be a wider public interest in this. For me, there has to be something that would say that there is an opportunity for improvement because it's not just about going off and looking at something that you think is interesting. It has to be something that would contribute. It's probably a mosaic of things but it's worth stressing again that the experience that I have learned from other ombudsmen is that it's used sparingly and by use sparingly it's used very effectively. It's about either systemic change in a sector or it may be about an issue that we recognise across the board. I couldn't give you a specific subject because it's not something that we've particularly said, let's go and look at something like this. Thanks for that. You can see that there's a potential for this to be cast very wide. In connection with that, I note from your briefing under planning complaints, you'll be responding to us in the planning bill, which we obviously look forward to. However, you say that the planning was the third most complained about subject for local authorities and is consistently in the top five from year to year. Can you just confirm that that top five is within local authorities or it is top five within local authorities? However, those are difficult to resolve and you can't deal with discretionary matters of which they're subject of discretionary powers. In broad terms, do you dispose of most of those kind of complaints at a very early stage because they're not within your powers or do you find that there are areas that are a bit grey where you possibly could be but you're not sure and that's why you're interested in exploring more powers in that area? A bit of both. I'm probably going to let Nicky have a say as well here as it's her team that have done all the investigations over the last year. I think it's right to say one of the first things that we do when complainants come to us is we try to establish clearly the heads of complaint but also the outcome that they're seeking. In a lot of these cases, the outcomes that individuals are seeking are just simply not things that we can achieve for them and so that we would manage their expectations and manage them out so quite a high proportion of these cases are closed at what we would call our early resolution stage. The ones that we progress to investigation and the examples, we obviously publish all of our public reports so you can see the examples of the types of matters that we would look at but things like poorly worded planning conditions that are therefore unenforceable might be an example of something so we're not actually looking at the professional judgment but we are we are looking at the wording of the application. Okay that's helpful, what are others in? Jenny Gorff. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Going back to the line of questioning from my colleague Graham Simpson, you mentioned, Rosemary Agnew, about the proposals to look at investigatory powers with the Scottish Government at the moment and so widening your remit as it were. However, the backlog of cases that was recorded last year resulted in what was described as a holding bay in your briefing for today in which 240 cases were unallocated. Before we go and look then at widening your remit in terms of further powers, has that been resolved and is it being resourced? Yes and yes, 15 December what we did was, and this ties in actually with not taking on a communications manager straight away, we used our resources in a different way across the organisation to try and we basically let some things go from our business plan that we didn't do and we put the extra resource into focusing on those unallocated cases. We engaged as a team on how we were going to do that and how we approach it. We also over a period of months made changes to some of our procedures to try and make sure that we could move cases more quickly, but basically what we put into it was hard graft and resource. Just ask sorry on that point, how did it come about in the first instance? Were you able to identify how this backlog was created? It was a very simple equation, a spike in the number of complaints received and a fall in the resources in order to deliver them and in real terms the other thing we've also done is we've recruited up to complement, we've seen a reduction in sickness levels which has also helped and we've just very clearly put all our effort behind it, but I must put a word of caution in this. What we have done is made sure that they're allocated and that they are being looked at, there will still be a period of time where it will impact on us and we're carrying heavy workloads, but it is fundamentally down to the number of people there in order to carry out the work combined with making changes to some of our investigation processes. In terms of then taking on new powers, the only initiative stuff, if we were to take that on, we're suggesting a different funding model for that which is that if we identify particular area, we have a clear scope, we have a clear brief and we have a clear business case and we will approach the corporate body separately either through the contingency fund or through the budgetary planning process where we would ask for a one-off unconsolidated amount so it wouldn't impact on other areas of our funding. Right now we are, I would say, probably funded and resourced adequately for the current volume of work that is coming in. I say probably because one of the challenges we have is that the improvements that Nicky and her team had made in terms of how we process complaints, we don't know for certain how effective they've been yet because we've had this backlog of cases, but for the record I really cannot stress enough just what a monumental effort it's been by the team. They always work hard but worked exceptionally hard on this and I'm very grateful to them. With regard to the learning and improvement unit, you mentioned in your response to Andy Wightman about inadequate resource for the learning and improvement unit. In terms of how that learning and improvement unit has helped to drive learning and improvement, in terms of the complaints recorded from 2016-17 and then from 2015-16, the numbers have remained the same, 37 per cent of all complaints with regard to local authority. How has the knowledge from that learning and improvement unit helped to inform local authorities in terms of how they're dealing with complaints? Has it helped to drive improvement? I'd say it's starting to in a very real way, but part of that is that there are a number of things that we do and I think that in a way saying that it is a learning and improvement unit gives a different impression. It's basically a person and one of the things that we are doing in John's team that's looking at collectively how we go about engagement and improvement and standards because they're different facets of the same thing. The first major thing that the learning and improvement unit have been focusing on is it's actually an internal change on how we make recommendations on decisions, because if you don't make your recommendations meaningful and deliverable, then they lose their potency. We're very much clearer now on a finding, defining what we want to see as an outcome and then what the evidence of that outcome is, but more significantly we now make them in three different ways, those that are relating specifically to personal injustice where we're asking usually for an action to be taken, an apology or sometimes financial redress. We're also separating out the recommendations that are about service improvement and these are well over half of our recommendations now since April and then those relating to complaint handling and at the same time we're giving feedback about complaint handling. What we will see is incremental increases but what we're also aware of through engaging with the network, sectoral network groups is a large number of complaints that get dealt with at first stage. 80 per cent in local authority. 88 per cent of complaints directly to local authorities last year were closed at stage 1, which is five working days, so an excellent performance locally in Rosemary is right. The question is around how the learning and improvement unit is valued to local government in particular and it's a wider thing than just learning and improvement. It is around the help and support and guidance that we give through the networks in relation to benchmarking, comparing and contrasting performance, looking at good practice and sharing that. Of all the network, every sector has a network, a complaints network. The local government sector is the longest running and the best attended and there is a real driving commitment from people who are dealing with complaints locally to learn and to improve. The other working on is obviously gathering and analysing our own information to see if we can identify where there are public bodies who might need some support and we've directly provide support to some of those but one of the things that we want to do over time is actually make all our recommendations available through our website as a searchable database so that other public bodies and complainers can see what we have asked people to do. It's also a way that we can be smarter about them ourselves so if we've made the same recommendation to the same public body within the last three months and we've got the same issue coming up again, how do we help them to use their own resource more efficiently? It's about much more joined upness as much as learning and improvement off for its own sake. I wonder if I could follow up on some of that. I suppose it looks that I'm going to look at some themes that have been raised in relation to recent correspondence with yourself. I must argue that I wouldn't dream of raising the individual case because that would be highly inappropriate but I'm just conscious that my constituents will be watching this and I didn't mention the fact that they've been in correspondence with you. They would think that there was a lack of transparency so that's the only reason for doing that. MSP's another struggle with the idea of public bodies, in this case a local authority, has got statutory duties, they've got internal complaints processes and they can handle all of those to the required standard. That doesn't necessarily mean that they've done it well. Those are two very different things and that leads us towards where there's maladministration or where you're bumping along, ticking the boxes, jumping through the hoops just that you have to jump through. Therefore, the outcomes that constituents or service users want are not things that you can particularly rule on or take decisions on or have enforcement actions on. I'm not sure whether you should or shouldn't have but there's an expectation out there that you should have or it should drive change at a local level. That's why I'm particularly interested to think about the idea of a learning and improvement team. I'm just wondering where the balance is in relation to the expectations and the outset of a complaint where I think that we've all seen those cases where we go, oh yeah, the NHS did what they had to do or the council did what they had to do but they just about did it, they didn't cover themselves in glory and that goes through a complaints process and then it goes through maybe a review of that, then it comes to the ombudsman and because there's not technically maladministration means there's no outcome for the complainant so I know my constituents watching will get the point I'm trying to make but I'm just wondering some general thoughts in relation to how we can square that circle or how that relates to learning improvement and how we can drive up standards in this case it was a local authority level. I wish there was an easy answer to that one. I think the first thing to probably think about is the person who's making the complaint and this is for me at the heart of what we do. People should be at the heart of public services. Now it's very difficult on occasion to say to somebody I really really understand why you're making this complaint, I understand why it's important, I understand the scale of the impact it may have had, can't always understand the experience because I've not been through that experience but I can see how it is affecting you or your family and it's actually very difficult for us to then say and even though we understand all of that this will be the limit of what we can look at for you because we're basically nice guys and we want to put everything right so we have to try and manage expectation from the outset and we try to be realistic from the outset where I think it becomes particularly difficult for us then is once we've understood the outcome that somebody's looking for and we said we will look at achieving this but we can't do this it's then really dependent on the approach that we take and the approach complainers have in terms of relationship and public bodies because there will come a point where we make a decision and it may not be exactly what somebody has wanted and then when we say this is as far as we can go I can see that it might look like well you're hiding behind what your law says now we're learning an improvement I would hope can add to this is where we pick up some of the issues that are not necessarily part of the complaint so what was the communication like it may not have been within the complaint is there a different issue that could have helped with this that we could reassure people that we're going to look at those I think there's also something about the way we ourselves interact with complainers and it's very very difficult when you have an incredibly high workload to give every single person every minute you want to on the phone or in by meeting them and we do try and use the phone to talk to people to meet with people but there are occasions where the sheer volume of what my officers have to work on means that they will send an email which may it's factual there's nothing wrong in it but I can see had I received it feeling as emotional as I would do they really care well yes we do really care so part of the other side of this is I think we ourselves are going through a period of reflection about how we communicate ourselves so we I have personally decided since taking up office that where we've had some particularly challenging complainers or public bodies having far more personal contact I give out my personal email address I'm happy to do that and I think ultimately it's about improving relationships but also recognising that there does come a point for some people where however good we may be however far we have gone we can go no further and it's hard for people to accept that and those are the ones where the relationships breaks down most and that's something that we're still working on I think the public sector is still working on that that's very interesting I'm increasingly fine that sometimes complainers are not actually looking for a lot they're looking for a sorry could do better even if you made all your strategy duties and obligations in terms of process and administration so sometimes it's very simple and straightforward what complainers want can I ask another question then I'll come to Mr Stewart after that just to give you a notice that I'm taking you next and that is I mean just occasionally when when I correspond with the NHS or I correspond with one housing association particularly in Glasgow happens to the largest housing association in Glasgow and there's been a complaints issue and sometimes a constituent comes to me after it's been through a complaints process and SPSO and they say to me there's still something really irks me here I think there was something that was wrong in terms of how systems are operating or I'll then correspond and quite often I get a blanket return this has been through a complaints process this has been to the SPSO and it's pretty much we won't really correspond further with you on this now as a member of the Scottish Parliament you know as members of the Scottish Parliament sometimes we're looking at a person's experience and we've got our own specific constituency interest in asking certain questions and I sometimes feel that just occasionally public bodies use the fact that there has been a complaint it has been through their complaint system and that specific complaint has been to the SPSO they use that as a shield or a clock to hide from further public scrutiny in my particular experience particularly with housing associations or association singular I suppose but just occasionally from the NHS have you got any perspective on that? Well the first thing I would say is encourage your constituents at the outset to give you explicit permission to disclose their personal data because if we don't have permission from complainers to discuss their complaints we are limited with what we can say to you. SPSO talking about myself going back to the public body. But it's a general point I think that when you can only give an unpersonalised account you tend to stick to facts. There's a step then beyond that which is yeah I feel you've basically given me a brush off it's what you say yeah you've done all of that but you haven't actually answered my question that's one I hear a lot you haven't actually answered my question well if it's been through the SPSO process I would say for yourself and your constituents then you've got every locus to engage with us. I'm a strong believer in narrative you learn as much from narrative and listening to narrative as you do from looking at detail in complaints and that's where some of the learning and the standards work can help because if we don't hear it we can't listen to it so I would say if there has been something that's been through a complaints process and it's come all the way to the SPSO then engage with us as well because I'm interested then because I can just as easily go back and say to somebody you know it wasn't part of the complaint and rather than just tell the complainer to go back and complain again is there something that we can look at in a wider context so when I was asked earlier about what sort of changes do we want to make to engagement I want far more face-to-face engagement and if your constituents are bringing things to you sometimes there will be it will be the right answer to say actually it's been through but if there are other unresolved issues there's a matter of judgment then about does there need to be a different sort of conversation because obviously the complaint as a conversation wasn't the right one I think that that's very helpful and I'm just conscious of the resources your office has because of my default option when I'm stonewalled by a housing association where I want some very specific bit of information that I believe is vital and the reply I get as well the constituent your referencing has been through this complaints process the matter is finished I then perhaps in the very near future have to invoke FOI for the most basic information and that's something your previous background you'll be very aware of and it becomes quite burdensome I'm just wondering then I'll leave that sitting but I'm just wondering then we quite often talk about the police of pace principle so in terms of how your office is funded and it's from Scottish government and Mr Whiteman's got a role in that but if one local authority is unduly having huge amounts of complaints made through your office or one health board or whatever just under the Plutarch Pace principle is there something to be done there on how your office is resourced because why should the poor administration or service of one public body be unduly funded from the centre for the complaints process vis-à-vis others could we incentivise local authorities and others to perhaps improve what they do possibly I think the potential pitfalls with that is that it starts only focusing on those that come to attention whereas what you can often find is that an issue in one organisation is similar to the issue in another organisation in the same sector in terms of the Plutarch Pace principle it's very it's very sort of aggressive and it's very gives the impression of blame and often this is not about blame and fault it may well be down to that public body themselves having a resource issue or having a different type of problem I would rather look at it initially as let's see whether there is pollution in the first place and then we have different powers for raising profiles of doing things and it relates to my reporting powers they're they're a bit disconnected but I can report on things by laying reports before parliament and I think actually the influence of we have found an issue we can provide you with minimum support what are you going to do about it so it's the putting it right that costs most and I think that that is where I very clearly see it as being the public body's responsibility so our support and intervention approach that we are developing is about using our resource carefully to identify the issues but then engaging so that public bodies put it right and are accountable for putting it right that's helpful of course mr right was right to grab my attention when I made my earlier statement you're funded by the parliamentary corporate body and not by the government and that independence is very important as well in relation to funding and understanding that final week question of the information is not there it would be quite helpful to have it do you monitor across 32 local authorities or all the health boards in terms of how many complaints you get per local authority or health board or housing association almost on a relative basis to their size and the populace that they cover to see if there's any outliers there and if there are outliers there that might not flag up that they're doing something wrong it could flag up a resource issue and a variety of other things but that would be intelligence you could use to have some of these investigatory powers or new pieces of work you could do so do you do that data analysis we we do to a point the starting point isn't so much we monitor the complaints by sector obviously but we look at it in terms of the recommendations we make and so we we analyse recommendations and we might look at those then in terms of you know the majority are against X public body but actually they have got a very large catchment or a large number of complaints so it's really about bringing lots of things into account I would say we're in fairly early days of our analysis but definitely we do take into account other factors when looking that we don't just go on biggest number comes out top well interesting because you'd expect Glasgow to the highest number but proportionally they might they might be doing very well I have no idea that that's a that's a trawl that would need to be done well one of the things that has come out of other areas like the complaints standards work is every public body now has to keep complaint statistics and it might seem like a very minor thing but once you know how many complaints they're getting it puts the complaints we get into perspective so we might get the highest number from you know Glasgow city council for for local authorities but actually if you look at the number of complaints they get and that this is data that through the public sector wider is beginning to come through and be more reliable and in health there's the contribution from when we go to health improvement so is this and I think what we're seeing is we are beginning to be a much more constructive part of that wider discussion about let's take a more holistic look across the board at public services and public service improvement but the other thing I think it's worth stressing is that through complaints we do pick up immediate improvements that might only affect one or two people or one department in one hospital but they are equally important as well like this all makes the case for more a unit for learning improvement rather than individual aspects i think you should just let us choose a number you know only that was in my gift but it's not thank you for that mr stewart thank you convener you've touched already on the highlight that over 80 percent of complaints are managed at stage one which is a pretty impressive situation so organisations are getting better at managing that process themselves but you've also touched on the trends that are coming through and if someone makes a complaint they want a recommendation they want to feel that they've been listened to and acted on you highlighted last year that in local authorities some of the recommendations were taking longer to enact and there was a feeling that they were longer in the process of managing that has that trend continued within local authorities i think the conversation last year from memory was i think there was a particular case that was causing concern and that is something that we have with rosemary's new ombudsman we've resolved and i think that was probably at the forefront of the discussion and of people's minds at that point in time i don't think there is a i certainly haven't felt over the last 12 months that it's a significant issue with in terms of compliance with recommendations so that that's developed and progressed so there has been a good outcome and a happy outcome for that process happy but i think there's been a good outcome it's been resolved to some extent but the whole culture of complaints and people believing that they have rights the organisation should be held to account all of that in the process that you're looking at and you talked about communication and i think that's vitally important that you get the message over that you are there in a supportive role to try and get through some of the difficulties that people have faced when they've not managed to resolve some of the issues initially but it's how you manage that next stage to ensure that what you are achieving and what you are doing is actually making a difference i completely agree yes i think this is part of the the long term the longer game if you like because what we have seen are some short term gains like statistics for everybody the the early analysis the work on recommendations from the learning and improvement side and the direct intervention with some organisations what i think i will be looking at for the next few months is really consolidating to get some consistency and just some not consistency some continuity in a bit more settled environment for my own office in terms of complaints but also it's about having a a stepped and considered approach now to what we do in terms of support and intervention there's very often there's a there's a big you go for the big things but a lot of intervention actually happens with investigators who will say you could have improved that letter you could have done this as part of that work it's it is crucial that we identify some form of impact analysis but i don't know exactly what that looks like yet what i do know is it's not just about numbers because complaint numbers going up can often be an indicator of success as much as they can be an indicator of continued failure it's what happens to them that interests me do we keep getting the same things about the same public bodies and if we identify those and we do something and that stops then that might be one indicator but you don't just do a piece of research and then leave it we then need to find a way of going back to that so i'm thinking in terms of years you know i've got not quite eight years anymore but certainly if anybody has some really good suggestions on measuring impact i think it has to be on that more holistic feedback look at how complaints are being treated at a local level as well which is why the network groups are so important because that's where we learn more about particular issues that are facing complaint handlers it's also i think important to try and identify where trends come about because of a particular incident or a particular issue as opposed to the underlying systemic things so at the moment it's about monitoring intelligence gathering and then figuring out some really strong measures for it and have you examined what's happening in the private sector because organisations out there who are looking at service and support and managing their the clients and all of that where do you think you can gain or you can you can manage some of their expectations to take on board some of their advice and but they've seen being successful so that you can replicate it in in our own sectors it's a really interesting look at private versus public sector we are actively engaged in the ombudsman association and within the ombudsman association there are groups that look at particular issues and they're cross-sectoral where the comparison between public and private sector becomes more interesting though is a lot of the public sector complaints type approaches are very transactional they are you are going to deliver this product you are going to deliver this specific service whereas what we see in the public sector is a much more complex delivery environment so it's about you know healthcare is a really good example of where it doesn't just come from one place so what we we try and absorb through our contact with the ombudsman association is where there are some really good practical tips you know practical advice about trying to manage a difficult telephone conversation about what it's helpful to monitor or look at and put those in a public sector environment and the within the UK I do engage more with my public sector ombudsman colleagues we all do because we have some shared things where I'd say we probably have things to learn is in relation to the impact of communication because we have a user base for want of a better phrase who unlike most of the public sector a private sector have no choice and that changes the balance of the relationship between those accessing services and those delivering them and I think that's probably where the private sector could learn from us not the other way around. Thank you very much convener I'm interested I can stick and just contact to me about this in Monday in actual fact regarding whistleblowing in the NHS I know that from November 2018 the SPSO will be the independent national whistleblowing officer for NHS Scotland so I'm just wondering how this came about I mean who actually does this job at the moment for example? It doesn't exist at the moment in that way it's come through actually I feel like I'm doing enough talking we are all involved in this so which one of you would like to start? I think you asked where it came from it came from the the Francis inquiry to speak up and speak out and the minister the Scottish ministers responded by where they had a consultation and about the introduction of an independent national whistleblowing officer and it came about through the consultation where the SPSO was seen to be the most appropriate place for that to be hosted based very much on the perception of independence and impartiality it doesn't exist at the moment although there is a requirement locally within boards and so on to handle whistleblowing disclosures I think the issue that we have is that where somebody has gone through that process and come to a conclusion at the moment there is nowhere else for them to go so many many people are left in limbo feeling that they haven't had any form of appropriate resolution work has started already the ombudsman's engaged personally with the sector and with the Government we have set up a steering group we've met we've set up a working group we've met as recently as yesterday we had a really really interesting workshop with whistleblowers people who have gone through the whistleblowing process I think it's important to to learn from their experience to identify where the standards that we're looking to develop can be fit for purpose for somebody journeying through that process so you know I hope that answers your question at the same time through where it came from and where we are now in terms of the process our timeline is is very demanding because you're quite right I think that the target date is November which means that we will have to have a the standards in place probably by August to give sufficient time for boards to plan for implementation I mean I take it that there's quite a variance in how the whistleblowing is dealt with at this moment is there a as a health board it's got a gold standard for example not saying who might not do it as well but is there a gold standard that you're kind of looking to for example I suppose that might depend who you ask if you ask what's the board there's probably not there's not such a variance at the moment but I think the big issue is around that at the end of the process there seems to be nowhere to go and based on the work that the SPSO have done before in terms of being simplified and standardised getting people through a process as quickly as possible while all the time focusing on quality and thorough robust investigations will add value I think the the principles that were actually approved by Scottish Parliament some years ago for complaints handling many of them fit nicely with how you would look to handle a whistleblower disclosure and how you would look to care and support people who are going through that process so I think to ask you a question about gold standard there might not be one at the moment but hopefully by November there will be excellent I'm pleased to hear that to Cymru are just another weak point or two I'm just on this issue if that's okay I know from the notes that we've received that from April last year English parliamentary and health service onwards moved through the clinical advice support provided to the SPSO and many other public service ombudsman and in response the SPSO built its own bank of independent scotland based professional advisors and now has 28 internal advisors and 37 external advisors based in scotland earlier on you said that you were able to deal with the resources you had the resources to deal with things as they are now what are the resource implications going forward given that service provision and also the whistleblowing service that you're going to be providing from a member is there a need for additional resources Andy's listing yeah the whistleblowing we're already negotiating with the government that will be resourced because it is a new function and the way I believe that we have done this in the past we're certainly doing now is it's not just about how many people will nicky need in her team to investigate these it's also about carrying this through to other areas of the organization so what support in terms of training is needed what is the ongoing impact on learning and improvement work because you can't just take on another sector without having a bit of resource to do that so that is something that is if you like we're building in to the model the one thing that will be a real challenge I think though and this is something that will fall on the those who are doing the investigating is I think this is the area of all the things we've looked at in now and in the past that is going to be most unpredictable in terms of numbers because what we don't know is just what the capacity out there really is partly because of it's going to be something different to what went before but also if we have a better across Scotland have a better approach have a better and standardized and time limited you know it can't go on for years and years within a public body what we really really don't know is whether that will give more people more confidence to come forward or whether there's nothing out there much to come forward and I think that's a particular challenge for for Nikki's team because our investigators they they are skilled at what they do but you you don't just walk into an investigation type job a complaints reviewer job and be fully efficient from day one so part of our challenger I think when we're planning the the actual investigation side of it is is really to come a realistic this is what we'll start with but we'll put our hands up and say if we need more we're going to have to come back for more if it's too many we'll put our hands up and say that but that negotiation is with government directly because they are initially although our funding comes through the SPCB their funding that I don't know if you want to add anything to that no I think the the whistleblowing type complaints as rose me said at the moment there's very little data there about the even from a low level the number of concerns that are being raised right up to the the kinds of cases that go through the full public disclosure process so it is going to be difficult to predict I think it's also going to be difficult to predict in the sense of the level of investigation and the type of investigation approach that we adopt so we we have a lot of discretionary power about how we choose to investigate and I think that's a really good thing but I think that these these types of investigations may need a slightly different approach to complaints but that's something that we're going to have to think about and develop in preparation for when we take on the new power. A point from your annual report you're talking page 14 about in 2016-17 we began to record early resolution and investigation cases that contained a complaints handling issue and found that this applied to an overall 19.5% of these cases can you just clarify that this is a complaint about how complaints are handled as distinct from a complaint about a public authority? So this is possibly a bit geeky but I'll give it a go anyway. So technically we can obviously only look at matters that individuals bring us so when we're agreeing the heads of complaint if somebody explicitly wanted to complain about the complaints handling they would bring that as one of their heads of complaint that we were formally investigating but I think we fully recognise that that means that what you're losing is the intelligence that you were referring to earlier in terms of the complaints handling of that public body and so what we're now trying to do is to make sure that we also very clearly capture our view of the complaints handling by that body whether or not the person has complained about it against the standards that we work to so that we can then also feed that back systematically and record that systematically and that's information that we've not previously recorded so what it will give you is a better sense of of the cases that are coming to us how many of them did we have significant concerns about the complaints handling as well as the matters that the complainant wish to bring to us. We also look for good practice as well so that we can share that with other people it's not just about what goes wrong. Right so to be clear you're only looking at how complaints were handled where the complainant complains about how complaints were handled or are you now looking at that systematically across every complaint the latter that that's helpful I just noticed the percentages in each sector add up to 101.5. To do with I think it's to do with rounding my statistician tells me but yeah it's when you use a spreadsheet and limit the number of zeros after the decimal point I think. I'm sure we must have a point just looking at funding for the SPSO he'll give you 101.5% of your funding. And just a final little point I mean in your annual report you don't actually have a list of the public authorities that have been the subject of complaints I mean they're quite broad reaching from Creative Scotland to the British Wool Marketing Board. I mean do you ever do you I presume you do you have those statistics do you ever consider publishing them? In a way it's it's if I could answer a slightly different question will you consider publishing them then the answer is yes because obviously as a as an ombudsman you bring to the job your own view on the way things can be communicated and whilst it's not I think the case that you hear this phrase name and shame I don't think it is about that I think it's about constructive dialogue but we also have to shine a light on this as well so it's something that I haven't looked at but I will make a note to consider for the next annual report about whether we include it and if you would find that helpful. Just a question I mean it would be interesting I think. My final little question is about your the very final bit of your report where you talk about the 900 and 39 inquiries that you have signposted to other bodies like the bus passengers platform or the dental complaint service and so on. I mean that is that I mean you will only give two two two years there this year and last year and this year is quite significantly higher than last year nine three nine is opposed to seven five five do you get the impression that people are as confused as they have always been about where to go with complaints or is it changing? I think because of the the complaint standards authority work people people that are rightly meant to end up with us are getting to us far far quicker because it's a much quicker process there's a statutory duty to signpost to the SPSO and I think that's a really good thing and somebody made the point earlier that about the amount of time that people spend in complaints processes so I think it's it's a really positive thing that people are getting through complaints processes quickly and getting to the right place in terms of where people need to be need support and advice we obviously provide that as far as we can I think one of the one of the common referrals will be to the financial ombudsman service and I think that's really a matter for them and how they get their brand and their name out there to ensure that people understand where to go. That's helpful thank you. Well times upon us Ms Agnew thank you to yourself for coming along along with your team very very helpful hopefully look at the balance right we've been looking back at the the previous report and how you may take the the office forward in the future just before we move into private session is it anything that you would like to final comments to add or put on the records? If you have any additional questions you're very welcome to send them to us and if you would like to find out more about who we are and what we do there's an open invitation. We might just take you up on that so thank you to you and your team once more and we now move to agenda item 2 which I previously agreed to take in private session thank you