Launched earlier this week, our annual review of Adult Social Care Complaints reflects on the investigations we have conducted over the past 12 months across both public and independently-funded care.

Our Ombudsman Paul Najsarek urged leaders to rigorously scrutinise the services provided to people who might otherwise be hidden in society, and to ensure they are performing well for those who cannot speak up for themselves.

Now in its tenth year, the 2023 report sees us upholding three-quarters of the investigations we carry out in detail. However, complaints received have levelled off in recent years and we're pressing for care providers to be required to include details about complaining to us in their policies and procedures.

We launched the review at our biennial online conference for adult social care providers. This popular event was attended by more than 100 providers from across England.

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We have launched a consultation on a new complaint handling code which sets out steps local councils must take when dealing with complaints. We are issuing the Code jointly with the Housing Ombudsman.

With the Housing Ombudsman already applying a code, the consultation forms part of it becoming a statutory requirement under the Social Housing Regulation Act. For social landlords, including councils, already under the Complaint Handling Code, there will be few changes with the main provisions of the proposed statutory Code unchanged.

For us, the consultation sees a code being introduced for all local government functions for the first time. For councils who are landlords, this will end the two-tier system with housing management and corporate complaints.

The Code will make it easier for local people and tenants to hold local authorities and social landlords to account when things go wrong by providing a single standard of complaint handling in these sectors. The Code puts responsibility on these organisations to put things right as soon as possible without the public having to escalate their concerns to either Ombudsman.

We are inviting the public to provide their views on the consultation. You can find out more information as well as how to provide your response on our website.

Find out more and take part in the consultation

The Advisory Forum has been set up to ensure that feedback from users of our service is a key consideration when deciding how we improve and develop it.

The forum acts as a critical friend to give us direct feedback and to help us ensure our service meets the needs of everyone.

The group will meet twice a year, and is made up of previous complainants, including advocates, and some council representatives.

This year we discussed council complaint handling and the joint Complaint Handling Code which is currently out for consultation. Later in the year, we will be focusing on accessibility and how we consider requests for changing how we communicate with people who need extra help to use our service.

Most of the complaints we deal with are about councils and care providers. But we can also investigate complaints about several other types of organisation. These range from national parks to internal drainage boards, fire and rescue authorities and police and crime commissioners.

Because we receive fewer complaints about these organisations, we want to ensure they understand our role. At the moment we are focusing on working with combined authorities (CA). Some of these have been around for over a decade, but they are growing in number and the responsibilities they have.

We recently met with representatives from many of the combined authorities, including Liverpool, Greater Manchester and North of Tyne to talk about our role, explain what sort of complaints we’ve seen so far, and promote good practice.

We’re delighted they are starting to book on our training, which guides organisations on how to use complaints to learn and improve. A good example is one of our investigations that helped a CA develop its approach to consultation so it properly considers equality rules. We plan to keep working with CAs as their remit develops.

Earlier in the year we also met complaint handling staff at most of England’s Fire and Rescue authorities. Many complaints they deal with are from their own staff, which are not within our jurisdiction. But we can investigate complaints from the public. Recent examples include how authorities dealt with relatives following a fatal road traffic accident, carried out home fire safety checks, and one where we did not find fault in the authority’s decision making after a fire that destroyed a block of flats.