Ombudsman news special - annual review launched

Special edition - annual review of complaints launched

Annual review 2021-22

This week we've launched our Annual Review of Local Government Complaints.

The report gives invaluable insight into the state of local complaints handling across England, and offers people the opportunity to see how their local authority is faring and compare them to similar councils.

The power to change

Mick King

We're increasingly focusing on making wide-ranging recommendations to better council services, and in the past year we've directed more improvements to local councils than ever before.

Although our role is to remedy individual people’s problems, we're increasingly looking at how we can make sweeping recommendations on the back of those complaints to help councils learn and improve services for everyone.

In 2021-22, we made 1,848 service improvement recommendations, with all but a vanishingly small number of councils complying (99.7%).

Sadly, we are also seeing councils taking too long to put in place the recommendations they've agreed to, with 18% of remedies being implemented late.

Read more