The last few years have seen a period of significant review of the way complaints about public services in Scotland are handled. As a result, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament agreed a broad programme of change to help drive improvements in public service complaints handling. This agreement added new roles and responsibilities to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) as well as impacting on how each public service in Scotland responds to complaints.
The Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (building on the work of the Crerar and Sinclair Reports) gave the SPSO the authority to lead the development of simplified and standardised complaints handling procedures (CHPs) across the public sector. Following consultation, a Statement of Complaints Handling Principles was developed by the SPSO. These principles were approved by the Parliament and published in January 2011. In February 2011 we published our analysis of the responses to the consultation in relation to the proposals for standardised CHPs. We also published the SPSO’s ‘Guidance on a Model Complaints Handling Procedure’, which is based on the principles and is the basis on which we will seek to develop, in partnership with public service providers, model CHPs for the areas of public services that they deliver.
The SPSO has set up an internal unit, the Complaints Standards Authority (CSA), which will provide further support in improving complaints handling procedures. The CSA will work in partnership with individual public sector areas to oversee the process of developing model CHPs for each sector in line with the framework of the principles and the ‘Guidance on a Model Complaints Handling Procedure’. The CSA will also work in partnership with sectors to agree the timescales for introduction of the model CHPs.
We look forward supporting public services in Scotland as they seek to develop procedures which comply with the principles and to build a culture across the public sector that values complaints as a driver of improvement in the delivery of public services.