Information request relating to PHSO's targets and case closures for 2014
I write in response to your information request dated 14 February 2015 in which you asked:
1. Can PHSO confirm that they have a target to close 4,000 cases by the end of the financial year? (end of March).
2. Can PHSO give data per month for the closure of cases from April 2014 to the current date? i.e. how many cases closed per month.
During the preparation of our strategic plan three years ago we consulted widely on what we needed to do to change. The overwhelming piece of feedback was that people, including the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC), said that they wanted us to do more investigations. This is the foundation for our strategic plan goal to have ‘more impact for more people’. We have already made some important changes and last year we concluded six times more investigations than in the prior year (2199 in 2013/14 compared to 384 in 2012/13).
We have recently updated our strategic plan which can be found on our website here.
We do recognise that we still need to change our service and transform the experience of our service users. We remain focussed on the goal of having more impact for more people but, to answer your question, we are not driven by a set target number of investigation and of course, as a public service, we are dependent on the volume of complaints and enquiries we receive. We have indicated that our investigations are on course to reach 4000 a year as you will perhaps recall from the PASC scrutiny hearing you attended.
Information relating to the number of cases we have closed since April 2014 is available on our website here.
I hope this information is helpful.
Yours sincerely
FOI/DP Officer
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman