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Annual Report of the Ombudsman 2004

Chapter 4 - Honouring Commitments

Honouring Commitments

Arising from the experience of discovering that an undertaking given by a local authority to my Office to introduce new procedures had not been carried out two years later, I have put in place a system to monitor such undertakings/commitments. Where, in the course of examining a complaint, a local authority advises my Office that it will carry out certain actions in order to resolve a complaint, or that it will introduce a change in procedures to avoid a recurrence of a complaint in future, such an undertaking/commitment will be followed up later in order to ensure that it has been carried through, even though the complaint file may have been closed. This is achieved by entering the details in a database and reviewing the entries in the database on a regular basis. The database has been in operation for the duration of 2004 and includes 32 relevant entries. Of the 32, 17 were delivered on by the relevant local authorities by the year end. Planning issues accounted for 13 of the entries of which 7 had been acted upon.

These results would indicate that commitments/undertakings to the Office are carried through in just over half the cases within the timeframe envisaged. I would like to see a better performance in this area as I take a serious view of failure to carry out a commitment given to my Office. Indeed, I regard such failure as maladministration which, in turn, may attract further critical comment from my Office. Should a better performance in this area not be evident in 2005, I will consider naming those local authorities in future Annual Reports who do not deliver on their undertakings and commitments.

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