Annual Report 2007-08 - the Parliamentary and Health Service ...

Parliamentray and health service ombudsman annuall report 2007/082Case StudyComplaints processwas not fully explainedIn July 2006 Mr W sent the Security Industry Authority (theAuthority) an application form for a door supervisor’s licence.The Authority wrote back to Mr W saying that his form wasincomplete; it enclosed not his identification documents, butthe application form of a third party, Mr A. Mr W told theAuthority that it had sent him Mr A’s application form and heasked where his own form was. The Authority said human errorhad probably led to Mr W’s application being separated fromhis documents and replaced with Mr A’s application. Mr W wasinvited to write in to complain.After several attempts, in November the Authority finallymanaged to contact Mr A, who confirmed that he had receivedsomeone else’s application form. He said he would return it tothe Authority. Having not received the application form back,the Authority contacted Mr A again asking him to return it as soonas possible. Following a further exchange of correspondence withMr W, in February 2007 the Authority refunded his £190application fee as a goodwill gesture. Mr W acknowledged thegesture but said he could not accept that the Authority tookall complaints seriously; that he had not been made aware of itscomplaints policy or procedure and had not been kept informedof progress. He said that the Authority had still not addressed allof his concerns.In some cases, the errors that ledto a complaint are compoundedat the complaint handling stageby well-intentioned but ultimatelycounter-productive efforts toresolve problems informally. In aninvestigation involving the Departmentfor Communities and Local Governmentwe found that a 14-month delayresulted in this way when theDepartment attempted to negotiatea voluntary agreement to settle thematter, before eventually startingformal modification procedures.We upheld Mr W’s complaint in full. We found that the Authorityhad probably sent his application form containing personal detailsto a third party. It is the seriousness of this error, at a time whencrime related to identity theft is much reported in the media, andin the knowledge that such crime can have a wide-ranging effecton victims, that led us to find the Authority’s actionsmaladministrative. However, we saw nothing to suggest that themistake was a result of systemic problems. The Authority did notanswer Mr W’s concerns about its complaints process and shouldhave done more to explain it to him.The Authority agreed to apologise to Mr W for not fully explainingits complaints process to him, and to review the complaintsprocess, with particular attention to the need to make informationabout it publicly available.15