Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
This is my final Annual Report as Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman as my seven-year term comes to an end in March 2024. It is also Amanda Amroliwala’s last Report as Chief Executive as she steps down in July 2023, having provided outstanding public service.
There remains much to be done to create an exemplary Ombudsman service, but, together, and in partnership with colleagues, Board members, service users and stakeholders, we leave to our successors an organisation transformed, strengthened and in good heart.
In 2017, we consulted extensively, inside and outside PHSO, to refresh the vision and values of the national Ombudsman service. This led to the creation of three core pillars we’ve worked tirelessly to implement over the last six years and sits at the heart of what we do going forward.
Professionalism and empathy
The first of these three core elements involves adding greater professionalism and empathy to our complaint handling processes. This has led us to:
- streamline the investigation process.
- introduce mediation into our portfolio.
- develop a new suite of professional training and development for staff.
- introduce formal accreditation for case handlers.
- establish an award-winning Academy for new staff.
- develop new quality assurance standards for investigations.
- review and revise our Clinical Advice operations
- set up an Expert Advisory Panel to advise on complex cases.
Openness and transparency
The second element aims to demystify our work and make us more open and transparent. This led to the development of an online platform to publish summaries of hundreds of cases we have investigated each year.
This number currently stands at 925 complaints published since April 2021. In addition, we have continued our practice of laying significant cases and thematic studies before Parliament.
Strengthening relationships
Third, and related, we have continued to transform our relationship with organisations and communities relevant to our work in the UK and internationally. We worked with organisations across the NHS and UK Central Government to co-create the PHSO-led Complaint Standards to this end. The Complaint Standards set out best practice in complaint handling and are supported by model guidance, networking and training to promote excellence.
The Radio Ombudsman podcast has explored the dilemmas of Ombuds practice with complainants, Ombuds leaders and stakeholders across 29 episodes.
We have created a Public Engagement and Advisory Group to ensure sustained complainant involvement in our drive for better, more sensitive processes and to complement our regular independent surveys of user experience. User rating of our impartiality currently stands at 77 per cent.
We’ve also begun to roll out ‘Ombudsman roadshows’ – recently in Stockton-on-Tees and Northern Ireland – promoting connection with people traditionally least likely to use our service.
We have also played a significant role in the proceedings of the International Ombudsman Institute, leading research and collaborative practice in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An effective modern Ombudsman service
There is much still to be done, notably the introduction of long-promised, long-delayed, legislative reform of public sector Ombudsman structures and powers in the UK.
But this has not stopped PHSO from holding the English health service and the UK central Government to account for significant failures, notwithstanding the challenges of COVID-19 and the dislocation of public services. These failures seen in our casework include prioritising organisational reputation over patient safety, repeated avoidable deaths in hospitals, disregard of the rights of British citizens in the Windrush scandal, and in the allocation of disability benefits.
Our casework has secured justice for many users of Continuing Healthcare services, a woman whose report of sexual assault was severely mishandled, and a man denied potentially life-saving treatment due to a late cancer diagnosis, among many others.
In addition to the constructive annual scrutiny of the Parliamentary Select Committee and the National Audit Office, we have commissioned and pioneered independent peer reviews, validated by the International Ombudsman Institute, to benchmark our progress against comparator organisations.
The latest peer review, published at the end of 2022, found that PHSO is ‘now a substantially stronger organisation than it was … in 2018. It is an efficient, enhanced and effective modern Ombudsman service, which provides significant value for its stakeholders’ with ‘core strengths in terms of its leadership’ and professional development initiatives which have ‘set new and high standards in the Ombudsman sector’.
I am grateful for the privilege of having served as Ombudsman and thank all my colleagues for unwavering support through challenging times.
Download the Ombudsman’s Annual Report.
