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Abstract
Ombudsmen have a dual role: to redress grievances and to improve public administration. While the redress of grievances remains their main focus in the United Kingdom, ombudsmen are increasingly exploring their improvement function. Government policy now also places more emphasis on the idea that ombudsmen should help agencies to get decisions ‘right first time’. Despite these developments, little research has been conducted into ombudsmen's effectiveness in this area. This article contributes to existing knowledge by reporting the findings of a study investigating the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman's impact on administrative decision-making in local authority housing departments.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to express his grateful thanks to Michael Adler for supervising the MSc dissertation on which this article is based and to all those who provided advice and comments on drafts of the MSc dissertation and/or this article, including: Alice Brown, Simon Halliday, Tom Mullen and the anonymous referees.
Notes
1. Local authority housing departments were chosen as subjects of study because the SPSO consistently receives more complaints about local government than any other sector and the highest proportion of those complaints relate to housing (SPSO Citation2008, Citation2009, Citation2010). It was, therefore, a significant area for study and one which was investigated with sufficient frequency for meaningful data to be generated.
2. The Ombudsman's commentary is a monthly publication giving an overview of cases published and commenting on issues arising from casework.
3. MacCormick states that inconsistency occurs when a rule is ‘contradictory of some valid binding rule of the system’ and cannot be ‘‘explained’ or ‘distinguished’ to avoid such a contradiction’ (1978, p. 106).