5 A role for the centre
89. Responsibility for handling and monitoring complaints
currently belongs to individual departments. However, as we have
shown in this Report, complaint handling across government is
inconsistent. Our view is that it needs stronger central direction.
Direction does not mean micro-management. It means taking measures
to raise standards and deal with problems that recur throughout
public services.
90. In the recent past, there has been some central
direction to promote good practice in complaint handling. The
Service First Unit in the Cabinet Office was created in 1998 to
help achieve the new administration's ambition to modernise public
services. It re-launched the Citizen's Charter as the Charter
Mark, established the People's Panel, and introduced initiatives
to increase cross-government working. The aim was to create:
…public services that respond to the needs and
wishes of people who use them on a daily basis, which give public
servants the chance to show their dedication, enthusiasm and initiative,
and which work together to improve the communities they serve.[86]
91. The Service First Unit had an emphasis on spreading
best practice. It produced best practice guides including How
to deal with complaints, which provided sensible and
practical advice on complaint handling for government organisations.
The best practice guidance was not intended to be prescriptive,
as stated at the time:
As public services place increasing emphasis on quality,
so we need to offer them practical help in achieving this. If
every organisation is not to re-invent the wheel, it is important
that knowledge of innovations and best practice should be communicated
between service providers. The Cabinet Office has traditionally
played an important role in acting as a focal point for spreading
best practice. We intend to continue and strengthen this role.[87]
92. Despite this promise, since the Service First
Unit's demise in the early part of this decade it appears there
has been no central government champion to encourage good complaint
handling. The Cabinet Office publication that explains Ombudsman
investigations into complaints, The Ombudsman in your files,
has not been updated since January 1997. Some guidance on complaint
handling is contained in the current Charter Mark criteria. However,
take-up of the Charter Mark among departments and agencies is
low. Consequently, there is a need for central guidance on good
complaints handling practice that reaches all parts of government
and the public services.
93. We are pleased that the Government has worked
with the Ombudsman on her Principles of Good Administration and
her Principles for Remedy, which set out the high-level precepts
underpinning how departments ought to deal with complaints. However,
the Ombudsman told us that in her view more needs to be done to
regain the original momentum of the Charter initiative:
…in a strange sort of way it seems as if it
has all been downhill since the Citizen's Charter. That really
is more me saying something positive about the Citizen's Charter
than necessarily negative about the state of things now. It seemed
there was so much of value in that which was built on and then
seemed to wither on the vine a bit.[88]
94. She
went on to explain that her office had done some searching for
Cabinet Office documents which had been part of the Service First
programme, including How to deal with complaints:
We found it eventually in a bit of the website called
'This information is being maintained for archive/historical purposes.
It will not be updated'. I thought that was hugely symbolic of
where this sits.[89]
95. We believe that the Government should show that
it is serious about responsive, listening public services, and
give complaints a higher profile and priority. Pat McFadden MP,
then the Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office, suggested
to us that, "where we can have a role is if we think there
is particularly good practice in one area, encourage it in the
other and set out central principles for this".[90]
There is
clearly a need for a centrally co-ordinated official effort to
champion good practice in complaints handling across government
and the public services. We recommend that the Cabinet Office
should take the lead within central government to produce effective
guidance on how to deal with complaints. It should take account
of key principles for handling complaints which reflect the recommendations
in this report, as well as relevant existing guidance, and be
drawn up in close consultation with the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
We are likely to come back
to the role of the Cabinet Office when we consider other issues
arising from our Public Services: Putting People First
inquiry in the companion reports to this Report.
96. There also needs to be a stronger role for the
centre in holding departments to account for the way they monitor
complaints and use complaints data. It should be a requirement
that departments and agencies include information in their annual
reports on the number of complaints they receive (as HMRC currently
does). This information should be comparable across government
bodies. It would make it possible to see what proportion of complaints
received by an organisation are reviewed and upheld by the Ombudsman,
and provide a snapshot of where services are seriously falling
below the expectations of citizens. Together with other forms
of customer feedback, a real picture of citizens' views of the
services they receive could be built up. Lessons could be learnt
and shared across government. We
recommend that all government organisations be required to publish
in their annual reports information on the number of complaints
they receive, how many are reviewed by the Ombudsman, and the
number that are upheld.
97. There is scope for including a sharper focus
on complaints handling in existing mechanisms for assessing government
performance. The Parliamentary Ombudsman told us that in her view,
inspection of complaint handling should form part of the Departmental
Capability Reviews (DCRs) of central government departments.[91]
Although the questions set as part of the DCR on "Strategy"
are intended to check for a "focus on outcomes" and
to investigate how departments "understand and respond to
what [their] customers want", there is no specific focus
on complaints.[92]
98. Significant
sums are spent on complaint handling. Handling individual complaints
well is key to confidence in public services. But complaints,
if systematically monitored, can also be a source of valuable
information which can be used to improve these services. Ensuring
consistency and best practice in these areas requires a lead from
the centre which is currently lacking. We recommend that the Cabinet
Office actively monitor how government organisations use information
from complaints to improve administration and service delivery,
and that it encourage the spread of good practice in this area.
86 Cabinet Office, Service First: the new charter
programme, June 1998, p 1 Back
87
Ibid, p 33 Back
88
Q 2 Back
89
Q 2 Back
90
Q 475 Back
91
Q 11 Back
92
Civil Service Model of Capability, www.civilservice.gov.uk (see
also Public Administration Select Committee, Ninth Report of Session
2006-07, Skills for Government, HC 93-I, Appendix 1) Back
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