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

Judicial reviews of our decisionsand actionsThere were ten applications for judicialreview of our decisions and two countycourt claims in the year.Of the ten judicial reviews, nine wererefused permission to proceed (althoughone of these is now the subject of anappeal and another a renewal application).The other judicial review was grantedpermission to proceed but was dismissedby the court.One of the county court claims wasdismissed by the court; the other waswithdrawn by the claimant.Casework qualitySeveral steps were taken in the yearto improve the quality of our casework,which will be continuing in 2008-09.In October 2007 we introduced a newDelegation Scheme and AccountabilityFramework related to exercising decisionson casework; and a new Outcomes andLearning Directorate was set up to ensurethat the lessons from our work arecaptured and used appropriatelyinternally and externally. We have alsoundertaken assurance work to ensure thatwe apply our Principles of GoodAdministration and Principles for Remedyin practice in our casework and in ourservice to customers.Joint investigations with theLocal Government OmbudsmenWe have developed our approach toworking with the Local GovernmentOmbudsmen for England followingenactment of the RRO enabling jointinvestigations to be carried out. Weensured that all key stakeholders werenotified of the RRO provisions, and inMarch 2008 we published our first jointreport, Injustice in residential care.Several further joint investigations are intrain and will be reported on in 2008-09.Developing and using managementinformation to improveperformanceImproving our corporateperformance frameworkThis year we developed and implementedan improved corporate performanceframework, which is based on an adaptedbalanced scorecard and which reflectsour strategic and business plans. Ourframework includes Key PerformanceIndicators (KPIs) to measure, monitorand review long-term performanceagainst our strategic objectives;performance against our annual internaltargets and service standards; and theeffectiveness of our performance inmanaging our business. This is shownin the following diagram.Progress on quality can be seen in thereduced number of upheld complaintsabout our decisions.80