Our Quarterly Newsletter April – June

A word from the Ombudsman

Welcome to the 7th edition of our newsletter.

It has been a busy few months, with two big pieces of work around our internal process and legislation being completed. We have now received further independent assessment of how we implemented the recommendations and lessons learned from the independent review of our Code of Conduct work. We have also submitted our response to the post-legislative review of the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019. We include some further details of these developments below.

Although our quarterly newsletter usually includes our recent complaint trends, we will not do so in this edition. This is because we will shortly be publishing our Annual Report 2024/25, which will include detailed analysis of our complaint trends during the recent financial year. All we will say at this stage is that it has been another busy year and we have seen another increase in complaints reaching the office! We will provide you with a quick digest of the report in a special edition of this newsletter in August.  However, as always, we are still bringing you the latest news on our Code of Conduct referrals, research, improvement work and communications and engagement activities.

It’s a busy period with our Annual Report and Accounts on the horizon, so keep an eye out for our highlights over the past year!

Independent Review – follow-up assessment

While an independent review of our investigation of Code of Conduct Complaints in 2024 found that our decision making was appropriate, fair and free from political bias, it also made recommendations to improve the current safeguards for ensuring fairness and impartiality.  We also received further recommendations from the Senedd’s Finance Committee which scrutinises our work.

We delivered the actions against all recommendations and lessons learnt within the agreed time frame and by the end of March 2025.

To provide additional assurance, Dr McCullough undertook further independent assessment of how we implemented the recommendations and lessons learned. We received the results of that assessment in May. It concluded that:

• all recommendations and lessons learned were fully accepted by us and have been fully implemented

• we demonstrated a comprehensive, thoughtful and consultative approach to the implementation

• the pace of implementation has been impressive

• a separate quality assurance review confirmed the robustness of our process.

“The organisation’s response to the recommendations and lessons learned from the 2024 Independent Review has demonstrated a high level of professionalism, transparency, and internal engagement throughout the implementation process. The level of staff involvement and external consultation reflects a mature, learning-oriented organisation committed to excellence in public service.” Dr Melissa McCullough

The details of all the recommendations and lessons learned and the actions we have taken in response will be included in our Annual Report 2024/25.

Review of our Act

We have now submitted our response to the post-legislative review of the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019.

The Act requires the Senedd to undertake a post-legislative review as soon as practicable after 21 May 2024 (that is, five years since the 2019 Act received Royal Assent). The Senedd’s Finance Committee launched the review in January this year. The review is focused on how we have been using our proactive powers to accept complaints other than in writing; undertake investigations on own initiative; and set complaints standards.

To inform the response, we gathered views from the Welsh public, our complainants, organisations that we can look into and third sector bodies. We will refer to some of this evidence throughout this newsletter.

Despite some challenges, we are proud of how we have used our proactive powers to date. In our response, we present evidence of how our proactive powers have benefited service users, the Welsh public and service providers, alike.

To date we have

• helped over 700 people to complain to us other than in writing, including using British Sign Language

• undertaken 2 wider own initiative investigations

• closed 10 extended investigations, with three further investigations ongoing

• brought 54 public service providers across Wales under our model complaints policy

• provided more than 550 training sessions on good complaint handling to over 10,000 people.

The 2019 Act has strengthened our ability to protect and promote fairness in public services. Supported by the proactive powers entrusted to us, our office remains at the forefront of best ombudsman practice in the UK and internationally.

We are also taking the opportunity to invite the Committee to consider some changes to our legislative framework, to enable us to better serve the people of Wales. These include:

• removing the statutory bar which prevents us from considering a complaint when it could be considered by the courts

• bringing into our jurisdiction complaints about schools and governing body decisions in Wales

• streamlining the process required to launch a wider own initiative investigation

• enabling us to issue sector-wide statutory recommendations, following a wider own initiative investigation.

We spoke to the Finance Committee about our work on 30 April and are invited to a follow-up evidence session on 9 July.

See our response to this review here.

Code of Conduct referrals

Since April, we saw one investigation referral to a Standards Committee. This is currently being considered and we will publish a summary to the case in due course.

The Adjudication Panel for Wales and Standards Committees have also considered 3 of our referrals from the previous year. We can report on one of these decisions, as in the other two cases the period for appeal has not yet expired.

Councillor Williams of Isle of Anglesey County Council (202302251)  

We received a self-referred complaint that Councillor Williams of Isle of Anglesey County Council had breached the Code of Conduct by making derogatory comments in a meeting.

Our investigation found that evidence of widespread media coverage; complaints to the Council; a complaint to a governing body of which Councillor Williams was a member and his own admission, were suggestive that a breach of the Code of Conduct may have occurred.

We referred the report on the investigation to the Isle of Anglesey County Council’s Standards Committee. The Committee found that Councillor Williams had failed to comply with paragraphs 4(b) and 6(1)(a) of the Code of Conduct.  The Committee decided that the most appropriate sanction to be applied was a censure.

What service providers think of our service

Since 2022, we have been conducting an annual online survey of liaison officers that work with us at the bodies within our jurisdiction, to gather views on our service. The results of the survey informed our annual Sounding Boards, allowing us to discuss feedback in detail.

This year, we took a different approach. We commissioned Beaufort Research to undertake a telephone survey of liaison officers, as well as ‘stakeholder research’ – 8 in-depth interviews with Chief Executives or other senior representatives of local councils, health boards and housing associations. The report on the latter piece of research can be found on our website.

Below, we include some key findings of the telephone survey and explain how we will act on the feedback received:

• Overall, respondents rate our service highly, with many scores improving compared to the previous year. The general assessment of satisfaction with our service was 8/10!
• 76% of respondents felt they were kept up to date appropriately. Although this is a good result, we think we can do better!  We are currently revising our Complaints Guidance to include specific timescales in which we will update organisations to provide consistency in the timeliness of our updates.
• A number of respondents felt that our deadlines for requests for information and responses were too short. We set deadlines to support us in achieving timely investigations and timescales are given to reflect this. However, we urge organisations to speak to us if they are struggling to meet these deadlines. We may consider extending the timescales if appropriate.
• Overall, respondents felt that our decisions were appropriate, but there were some concerns raised about how consistent we were in our recommendations, especially those involving financial redress. We are currently assessing our approach to recommending financial redress to provide more consistency.
• Some respondents expressed concerns that we should focus on more significant complaints. When deciding which complaints to investigate, we consider the impact on the complainant and wider community, as well as any potential systemic issues giving cause for concern over the possibility of widespread injustice. The publication of public interest reports draws out the more serious concerns.

Other work we will be undertaking in response to the feedback is to improve how we share good practice and how we publicise our findings and thematic reports, to support learning and improvement across relevant sectors.

We would like to thank all those who provided feedback or who took part in our in-depth interviews. We are committed to maintain our strong relationship with the relevant bodies in our jurisdiction and to working together to improve the delivery of public services across Wales.

Complaints standards

In 2025-26, we continued our important work to introduce complaints handling standards to public service providers in Wales.  Currently, 54 organisations across Wales operate our Model Complaints Policy, including all health boards, all local councils and most housing associations.

Since 1 April, our complaints standards team has delivered training to 410 people at housing associations and local councils. In 2025-26 we will continue to focus our attention on working with those housing association not yet operating under our complaints standards.

Own initiative work

We have the power to investigate issues on ‘own initiative’ – even without having received a complaint.  The 2019 Act grants us powers to undertake two types of own initiative investigations which we refer to as ‘extended’ and ‘wider’.

Extended investigations happen when we are already investigating a problem and we extend that investigation to other issues or complaints, or to another organisation, not yet complained about.

Wider investigations happen when we conduct a standalone investigation which does not relate to a complaint made by an individual.

We currently have 3 ongoing extended investigations.

In October last year, we published the findings on our second wider own initiative investigation into needs assessments for unpaid carers.

We know that third sector organisations have their ear to the ground and can share with us valuable feedback on issues affecting users of public services, which can, in turn, inform our own initiative work. This year, we asked Ruth Marks, CBE (former Chief Executive of WCVA) to gauge feedback from third sector organisations on our own initiative investigations to date.

Amongst other, the research concluded that, overall, the third sector organisations that took part:

• supported our use of the own initiative investigation powers
• felt that their front-line services were well placed to engage with the us, sharing relevant evidence and data
• supported the recommendations of both investigations
• were keen to know how we would hold public bodies to account
• wanted the impact of our reports and recommendations to be monitored over time to evaluate whether they were making a positive difference to people’s lives and improving their experience of public services

You can read Ruth’s report here.

One of the report’s recommendations was for us to develop ways to work with the third sector and to increase publicity of the own Initiative power. Therefore, we were over the moon to exhibit this July at gofod3, the biggest voluntary sector event of its kind in Wales. We used the event as an opportunity to gather views from across the sector on our own initiative power and gather some ideas on where to go next!

Attending the event was Elaine, our new Own Initiative lead:

“Hi, I’m Elaine, the new Own Initiative lead at the PSOW. I am really excited to get started on our third own initiative investigation! If you have any suggestions about what issues we should be looking into, drop me a line on owninitative@ombudsman.wales”.

In June, our previous Own Initiative lead, Sarah Jones, and Michelle Morris, the Ombudsman, recorded a podcast with the Ombudsman Association to highlight our latest Own Initiative investigation, ‘Are we caring for our carers?’ for Carers Week.

In the podcast, we discuss:

• Why we focused on unpaid carers
• How system failures impact carers
• Recommendations made to public bodies to improve their processes
• Why we need to better support unpaid carers

Listen to the podcast here.*

*Please note that this podcast was recorded by a UK Ombuds organisation, and so subtitles are unavailable in Welsh.

Outreach

We continue to take advantage of opportunities to build awareness of our service among groups that have been under-represented amongst our complainants. This year, we decided to narrow the focus of our communications and engagement work to these groups:

• Welsh language speakers,

• people from diverse nationalities and ethnicities

• people experiencing socio-economic disadvantage.

Want to hear more about our work and how we can help? Come and see us at:

• The Royal Welsh Show (21-24 July, Builth Wells)

• The National Eisteddfod (2-9 August, Wrexham)

Please contact our Communications Team at  communication@ombudsman.wales  to discuss any opportunities for further outreach activities!

Training

In addition, we want to strengthen our relationship with ‘gatekeeper organisations’ that are likely to support members of the public in bringing a complaint to us. So far this year we organised one online training session for staff of several constituency offices in Wales.

If you are interested in receiving free training on our role and process, please contact ffion.jones@ombudsman.wales to arrange a session.

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