Finance Committee

Okay, we'll go to our substantive item this morning, which is item 3, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, scrutiny of the annual report and accounts and estimate for—. The accounts for 2023-24 and the estimate for 2025-26. We've got witnesses with us again this week that were with us last week. Are you able to introduce yourselves for the record, please?

Yes. Bore da, good morning. Michelle Morris, public services ombudsman.

Bore da. Katrin Shaw, chief legal adviser and director of investigations.

Bore da. Good morning. Chris Vinestock, chief operating officer and director of improvement.

A warm welcome to you this morning and thank you for the papers.

Thank you for the papers that we've had already and the supporting documents. We've got your annual report and your estimate for next year as well.

Right, we'll start with some questions to explore the performance in 2023-24, and then we'll come on to the estimate then afterwards. But we'll start by looking at case load. But, before we do, do you want to say anything about the general report before we start?

Yes, thank you, Chair. Perhaps what I would like to start off by saying is that I think that the report represents, shows, very strong performance last year from the office, and from staff across the office. Awareness of our office improved, so more people know about us. That meant that more people contacted us than ever before last year, and we actually dealt with over 10,000 cases in one year, which is, I think, the most we've ever dealt with in one year. But we also closed more cases, which is obviously important, and our closures were up about 6 per cent, over 3,300 cases closed. We had a particular focus on aged cases last year, and you might want to come on to that later. We wanted to reduce the number of older cases we were holding, and the teams did extremely well at that, and we managed to reduce those cases by 70 per cent. And the important thing there, obviously, is there are people waiting for outcomes of those complaints, and resolutions, and they received them.

Our case loads—we've talked about last year—were quite high for our staff. We did manage to reduce those case loads for individual investigating officers within the public service complaints team last year, and that took some pressure off staff. But our code of conduct team was very busy, and again we referred 21 cases on to either standards committees or the tribunal, and that was the largest number of cases we've ever referred in one year. So, again, a very busy year for that team.

I think we're really pleased that we managed to operate more efficiently. We did reduce the costs of the cases we were dealing with. And I have to say that the staff performed exceptionally across the year in order to achieve those results.

Okay, diolch yn fawr. Thank you. Thank you for that overview, and we'll delve into some of this. Now, this is your first annual report and accounts following the publication of your strategic plan. How has the plan informed the operation of the office this year? And what's your overall assessment of—? Well, you've covered some of that performance, but how did it link up to the strategic plan?

Yes, okay. Well, you’re right, our new strategic plan sort of kicked in at the start of last year, April 2023. So, the annual report you’ve got in front of you represents the first year of that new plan. It very much informed the planning and operations for PSOW last year, and will continue to do so. And that’s by having a clear focus on those four strategic objectives, or priorities, as set out in the plan. So, the way we achieve that is that we have, sitting underneath that plan, an annual business plan. So, this sets out, for each of those strategic priorities, what exactly we are going to be doing through the year to progress them, and, obviously, sitting alongside that, we developed a new suite of key performance indicators. And that was to ensure that our KPIs were properly reflecting and measuring the new objectives—priorities, sorry—that we’d set in the plan.

So, we did all of that early last year, and all that was published on our website. So, we use those key documents to make sure everyone in the organisation understands what our focus is, what our priorities are, and what we’re looking to achieve through the year, and what targets we’re trying to achieve collectively.

We monitor that through quarterly performance review meetings that are held with the management team. But we also discuss and consider that quarterly with our advisory panel as well, who can give us an overview and scrutiny and direction and advice on where we’re going. And, obviously, the—

Sorry, you talked about the KPIs. So, are they KPIs that will change annually, or are they KPIs that are set and that you’ll measure performance against, so you’re likely to keep the same KPIs so that you see differences?

Yes, our intention is that that suite of KPIs will sit alongside the strategic plan for the three years of the life of that strategic plan. So, they won’t change annually. But what we will be doing is looking at the targets annually. So, that is enabling us to make sure that our targets reflect the capacity and the resources that we have available to us, but also reflect on the previous year’s performance. So, there may be some adjustment of targets, but the actual KPIs will remain the same.

So, would that make the KPIs easier or harder, depending on how your case load is looking? Is that how you’re going to—? How do the targets and KPIs link together, I suppose? So, if you make a target higher, then it makes the KPI harder to hit—

Yes.

—and how do we as a committee, then, look at how it works from year to year? You could virtually stay still on a KPI, or be very good on a KPI, but your targets got easier over time, or harder over time. So, it’s just for us to understand that.

Yes, and I think we—. It's a good point. We need to be open and transparent about those targets. So, I think, when we’re—. Obviously, year 1 is what we’re reporting now, and we’re telling you how we’ve done against the target we’ve set. Next year, we’ll tell you how we’ve done against the year 2 target, but I think we need to be able to show you what the year 1 target was, so you can see whether, actually, we’re making progress in terms of stretching ourselves and being more ambitious, or whether we’ve had to readjust that target downwards. And there might be legitimate reasons for that, which might be about capacity and the resources available to us, or other things that are happening in the organisation. So, we would look to set that out, so that the committee will be able to see, over the three years, what has happened to the target of each of those indicators and whether we’re making progress or whether we’ve had to roll back on some of our ambition.

I assume there’d be some narrative, then, as to why that’s potentially been rolled back, or made harder if the KPI is easily hit and you’re not stretching yourselves.

Yes.

Thank you. Great. Sorry, I stopped you in mid flow with that as well.

No, I was nearly there, really. Obviously, the outturns are reported in the annual report, and I think the other thing for us just to mention, which is something that we’ve received quite recently, is that we had an internal report done on our operational performance management arrangements, and we had substantial assurance for that work. So, that gives me some comfort about the way that we’re managing our performance as an organisation.

The proportion of service quality reviews deemed satisfactory or better was only 67 per cent, against your target of 75 per cent. So, I suppose, going from the conversation we’ve just had about KPIs and targets—this is the first year of the KPI—does that, then, set your benchmark? And, then, can you outline how your service quality approach is developing and what steps you’re taking to set those targets and then adjust them?

Yes. Perhaps I could say a few words on that and then bring Chris in to talk a bit more about our approach on that. So, you're quite right, the service quality review process is new. It was new last year. And so we had to set a target, really, without having any experience or data on which to base that target. So, we set an ambitious target. We didn't achieve it, you're right, but we've continued to track that target through this year, and at quarter 2 of this year—. We've just looked at our performance for the end of quarter 2, and that figure has now gone up to 81 per cent. So, at this moment in time, we would be confident of hitting the target we set for this year, which was actually higher—

So, you've no intention of changing that target; it's that you had to work towards it and it's actually improving service quality.

We actually set year 2 a higher target than year 1. We didn't adjust that target, because we knew that it was a new process and we were on a bit of a journey with it. But what I'm saying is that, at the end of quarter 2, we do look to be on target to achieve that higher target this—

And what's the higher target?

—this year. I think it is 80 per cent.

Eighty per cent. Okay. Chris, did you want to add anything to that?

Yes, thank you. I think Michelle has outlined the approach and the rationale. It's probably quite a good example, in a way, of how the KPIs will work in terms of the public and committee scrutiny of them, because, although we'll be changing the target each year because we want to get better, you'll be able to track the actual performance in terms of the percentage that have met that threshold. We do recognise, as Michelle said, that it's an area that we want to improve on, compared with last year, which was the last year—. I think we anticipated that the first year would be more difficult, as we were measuring our work in a way that we hadn't done before, and we had a lot of engagement with staff so that they understood what we were looking for in terms of service quality, and gave feedback to staff and managers on where it was falling short, if you like.

Can you give us a flavour of what that looks like? What is service quality?

That's what I was just—. If I just go on to that.

Sorry, I jumped in ahead of you.

No, that's fine. But I think what's really important—. We had some useful and interesting conversations internally about what service quality was, and the real focus is on providing good customer service and making sure that we meet our published service standards. So, that's, really, the focus of the service quality work. And, as the annual report says, it's looking at live cases as well as closed cases, which means that, if there is something that's not quite right, we pick that up earlier. It's done on a sample basis, but we do identify and have identified areas where we can improve, particularly around clearer expectations of updating complainants on where we've got to and more frequent communication.

One of the other strands was making sure that we're clear in how we manage complainants' expectations: we tell them what our process is and how long things are likely to take. So, that's very much the focus, and we'll continue to work with staff to try and continue to improve on our service quality performance this year and in the future.

And managing their expectations, does that then come from historical data saying, 'Well, this type of complaint usually takes this long', therefore that's where you set it, or—? So, if somebody comes to you and says, 'I've got this complaint', it's this type of complaint, therefore, it's probably—. We know that these take three weeks, five weeks, whatever it takes. Is that how you do it?

It's partly that, absolutely, in that we know that some cases, particularly once they get to an investigation stage, the outcomes will take longer to reach. But it's also about being clear about what complainants can next expect from us. So, if we know that we'll come back to them in four weeks, we tell them that, rather than having them, each day, thinking, 'I wonder if it will be today.' So, it's a lower level expectation as well, in terms of the stages of the process, as well as how long things might take overall.

And the feedback has been quite good on the whole, coming back from the public.

Yes. It's one of the things that we may be talking about later on, I guess, in that we do do work on customer satisfaction and do research on that, and that in some ways pushes in the same direction. It reinforces the focus on communication and on keeping complainants informed. And there's always a bit of a challenge, I think, which we've talked to the committee about before, in terms of differentiating between people who are happy with the outcome of their complaint and people who aren’t. Not surprisingly, people who are happy with the outcome of a complaint are happier with the service, but, putting that to one side, yes, those are the things we’re focusing on: communication, managing complainants’ expectations and keeping complainants informed.

So, your cases are higher by about 17 per cent this year than the previous year, because I think you received 9,863 cases this year as opposed to 9,328 the previous year. Can you outline how you've dealt with the increase in cases and what pressures that has put on your staff and on the office and how you've managed that?

Yes, well, undoubtedly, that increase has put pressure on staff and on their well-being, and I think we’ve talked previously, at previous committees, about the proportionate approach we take when assessing complaints and whether we’re going to take complaints forward. So, what that means is that we’ve had a real focus during that year on the more serious cases. So, the ones where there’s evidence of personal injustice or serious harm to individuals, and those are the ones that we have focused on. Regrettably—and Chris has already touched on this and I’m sure we’ll come back to it—we can’t investigate every complaint and that does leave complainants who we don’t—. If we choose not to progress their complaint, it does leave them unhappy and understandably so.

So, we’ve focused on the more serious cases. We’ve also tried to achieve, where we can, as much early resolution—so, where cases are simpler or where issues are more straightforward, then the early resolution route allows us to try and resolve those for complainants early on. So, if you don’t need to do a detailed investigation, you simply don’t do one.

And I think the other thing that we’ve done, and will continue to do, is we’ve made every effort to make sure that all of our posts are filled—we don’t keep posts vacant when people leave or retire. We don’t keep posts vacant for any longer than we have to. And what we’ve continued to do this past year is to use bank workers and temporary staff to fill those gaps between people leaving and us recruiting permanently to that role, because we have the budget capacity, because that role is empty for a short period of time and we’ve used that to make sure that we’ve got as many members of staff as possible focused on the work. And we’ve had good feedback from our staff on that—that that has helped to ease some pressure, particularly on investigating officers.

So, even if you've got pressure on other parts of the organisation, you don't leave—. Because one of the ways of managing a budget that's tight is to leave a role vacant and use that money then for other aspects, but that's not the strategy that you've gone for—you're more interested in making sure that the public are being served.

Yes, particularly for our investigation teams. So, investigating officers and the teams they’re in that are either doing assessment work, they’re doing investigation work, or even the team that sits on the front end—our intake team that take all the calls and deal with the initial inquiries—it’s really important that we keep all of those teams fully staffed. So, particularly in those teams, we wouldn’t be holding vacant posts. And if we have vacancies just because of the natural time process you go through to fill these posts sometimes, then we use that funding that we’ve got free for bank workers and temporary posts to try and fill the gaps, and that allows us to fill the gaps where the pressure exists in particular within teams. So, that’s part of the mechanism we've adopted.

Fine. I see that Rhianon has joined us. Welcome, Rhianon. I'm just coming to the last of my questions and then I'll come over to you. We're on pack page 176, I believe, so that's just for your reference.

So, the number of people—and I think Chris touched on this earlier—who were happy with the service they received has reduced from 48 per cent to 40 per cent this year. Do you know the reasons for the decrease? And what measures are you taking to address it?

Oh, sorry, Mike.

I'll come in after you.

Are you sure, or was it on that previous point?

When we get the answer to this, I will have a question.

Okay, fine, no problem.

Okay. No worries.

Yes, disappointingly, customer satisfaction did reduce last year; it reduced to 40 per cent overall. And Chris has already hinted at it, there is a very big difference between satisfaction rates for those complainants who receive the outcome they want and are looking for, and those complainants who don’t, and I think it’s worth quoting those figures, because they're quite stark. So, if someone is happy with the outcome they’ve received, then 98 per cent of those people are satisfied with the service they’ve received from us, and that’s actually gone up from the previous year. But those who were not satisfied, either perhaps we couldn’t progress their complaint—it wasn’t serious enough; it didn’t reach the sort of bar, if you like—or perhaps they didn’t like the outcome when we did do the investigation, then that figure fell to only 21 per cent of those people were satisfied. So, it’s a challenge, I think, for us to lift that figure of the people who are not satisfied, to lift that figure. And part of it, as Chris said, is through that better communication at the front end, managing their expectations and ensuring that they know the timescales involved in dealing with their complaint, and they know when we’ll come back to them, and we do uphold our promise there and go back to them when we say we will. So, that’s all part of it, and the service quality process is very much trying to drive that better practice to help improve this satisfaction level.

You asked about the reasons, so the sort of reasons that people say they’re unhappy is that we took too long, and that will be the case in some instances; if we go to a detailed investigation, they can take quite some time to progress, although we have reduced that figure this year. If people don’t get the outcome they like, so if we don’t uphold their complaint and say, ‘No, actually, we think the public body has not done anything wrong’, then people feel that we’re favouring the public body. We aren’t. We’re independent and impartial; we will base our decision on the evidence in front of us, but people will feel aggrieved if we’ve not upheld their complaint. We’ve had people say that they feel that we haven’t got enough resources to do everything, and perhaps they feel that that’s come through in the way they’ve been treated by us. And then, other people perhaps feel that we haven’t listened to them, and again, if they’ve not got the outcome they want, they obviously feel that we’ve not listened adequately to what they’ve said. So, those are the sorts of reasons why people say they’re dissatisfied.

The SQ process is really important to us to continue to focus on improving the customer experience of when people come to us, and I think there are other things that we’re doing through our IT and digital strategy to try and improve that information flow and communication to our customers to try and improve some of this, but also to help our staff through some automation, particularly at the front end of our process. So, for instance—and we might touch on this later—we’re investing in a new portal that will form the front end of our case management system to try and improve that information flow. So, it is quite a tricky issue, because of that disparity, dependent on whether people feel that we’ve dealt with their complaints to their satisfaction or not. We will keep working on that, but it is a challenge.

I take your point there, and I’ll bring Mike in in just a second. When it comes to measuring that and the questions that you ask within that, is it a blunt question, ‘Are you happy or not?’ Or do you go into, ‘Are you happy about this, that and the other,’ rather than—? You know, so, the, timescales; do you have that granular detail, so that you’re able to actually monitor whether or not some of your interventions are getting a bit of traction there, so that at least you can say, ‘Well, yes, 20 per cent weren’t happy but they were happy with the timescales, it was just the outcome', or the other things that you’ve explained?

I see what you mean, yes.

Yes. We do ask a number of questions and we review those questions each year. We try and keep the core of them consistent so that we can compare year to year, but we do review them. And we do try and get some more granular information that actually feeds into what is the dissatisfaction with the service, and we also ask the researchers to give people the opportunity to add a comment, which is where some of that feedback comes from.

I think it's worth saying that the answers do vary, depending on exactly what the question is. So, some people are quite reasoned in their responses to the question, so they say that they're not happy with the outcome, but they give a reasonable assessment. The scores go up and down on the other questions. There are some, if they're not happy with the outcome, 'Everything about the service is awful'. But it's interesting, just on a couple of things, 83 per cent of people, so that's across all complainants, said they found it easy to get in touch with us; 72 per cent of all people, including the people who weren't happy with the outcome, said we treated them with courtesy and respect. So, there are those questions, and we're trying to make sure that we get better information from that.

In that context, one of the things that our lead data officer will be working on is doing a bit more analysis of the responses to try and identify patterns in, for example, whether early resolution of complaints actually results in good satisfaction or less good levels of satisfaction. So, there's more work for us to do on that.

I'm sure there are people who say, 'I gave you an obvious case where I've been badly treated, and you haven't found it, therefore, I'm not satisfied with what you did.' I'm sure if I had a satisfaction rate from people complaining to me, I probably wouldn't get much more than 40 per cent to 60 per cent, because the people didn't get their repair done the next day, they didn't get their house and they didn't get the road problem dealt with. What I'm asking is about the people who are being complained about, the public bodies, have you got a satisfaction rate from them?

That's a good question. What we do is we do an annual sounding board with public bodies, so we do it in a slightly different way. I'm open to different views on this, but with public bodies, they'll have multiple cases from us they're dealing with in a year, particularly the key areas of health, housing and local government. So, they probably wouldn't appreciate being inundated with survey forms every time we close a case. However, what we do is the annual sounding board, and that is to try and get to whether they're happy with how we manage things, how we deal with them, how we could improve that and make things better. So, that annual sounding board is important for us to give public bodies a voice in the process, as well.

Because if you're anything like me, you've got a number of people who are never going to be satisfied, who are always going to complain. You're the last stage of the complaints procedure, having failed with everything else, including us, and they've now gone to the last body who is bound to find in their favour, because all the other people have been totally irrational in what they've done.

Yes, it's a difficult area.

The one thing that might be useful on this is in your report, if you've got the disaggregated data that says about the people who are satisfied with the outcome of their complaint and not, whether or not you give any thought to showing—because there's quite a gap between 20 and 98; it might be good to put them side by side and—

Okay, a bit more detail.

—some of that detail that you went into, because then we can see a flavour of what's set there. So, it might be something to take away, it might be something that we could possibly, in our report, reflect some of that.

Yes, by all means.

We can certainly do that, and that's information that we do consider as a management team and share with our advisory panel, so we can consider how that's best reflected in the annual report.

And how it's presented in an annual report so that we can, maybe, get an idea of what's happening. Because the people who are happy, we probably don't necessarily need to focus too much on, it's that dissatisfaction and how that's managed that is probably—

There's only one thing I would say, the 2 per cent who you found in their favour who weren't happy, any reasons for those? I would have expected it to be very close to 100 per cent. You've obviously now understood the problem that everybody else has ignored, you have been our saviour, our guardian angel, the people who have done it right. Why would 2 per cent of them still not be satisfied?

I guess it goes back to the reasons that we indicated. They might have got the outcome they wanted, but it just took too long, in their view, or they felt that we weren't timely in our communications with them along the way. We do recognise that, that's why we've had that focus on aged cases last year to try and bring them right down, because that, hopefully, will reduce that dissatisfaction.

Great. Well, welcome, Rhianon. I'm glad the traffic sorted itself out for you. So, can I ask you to come in at question 7, please?

Thank you very much, Chair. Apologies for arriving later than I meant to. We're going to talk to those aged investigations that we've just been mentioning, and those have drastically reduced, haven't they, by 70 per cent in 2023-24, which is no mean feat over the last 12 months. How many of these aged investigations are currently held? And what obstacles are there to reducing the proportion of these cases to zero by your own target of March 2025?

Okay. Thank you very much for the question. So, where we're at, currently, at the end of quarter 2, fewer than 10 per cent of cases were in that aged category, and by 'aged', we mean older than 12 months. I do need to qualify it, though: those were public service complaints, so these are complaints against public bodies in housing, health. If we look at code of conduct cases, there are more aged cases there and we've got a bigger challenge there, because of the high level of case load that we're carrying and the complexity of some of those investigations. So, if you like, that's one of the obstacles for us. So, I think we feel that we continue to make good progress on the public service complaints, but there are more significant challenges on the code of conduct complaints.

I think obstacles to achieving this continued improvement are that we're seeing an increase again this year in the number of cases that are coming to us. We made projections and we're about on those projections in terms of the increases we expected to see this year, and that might go up further. As a result of that, we've got over 700 open cases and I think that's the highest number of open cases we've ever had as an office at any one time. So, that—

Is that on both sides of—?

Well, that's the total cases across the two areas, yes. So, that does mean we've got some real challenges in managing and keeping those aged case numbers low, just because of the pure volume of stuff that's coming through the door, which, as you know, we can't control, and the fact that, like any public sector body, we've got finite resources to deal with them.

And I think there's an important point there about capacity, and we feel very strongly, particularly given the performance there was last year, that the organisation is probably at its capacity in terms of dealing with complaints. So, we can't keep absorbing more and more every year, is what I'm trying to say. There comes a point when you say, 'Right, are we there or near capacity?' and I think we feel that we are at the moment, with the improvements that we've made over the last year or two.

So, sustaining that with those high case numbers is going to be a continued challenge. And then back to the customer satisfaction conversation, where people don't get their complaints progressed because they're not serious enough, we probably will be disappointing more people and that feeds into satisfaction as well. So, there's a real challenge in trying to manage all of that, but at the moment, yes, fewer than 10 per cent of our public service complaints are aged.

Thank you. In terms of the target and the potential of displacement in capacity in trying to reduce or put the focus on reduction in terms of aged cases, is that, in a sense, de-prioritising the organisation? And secondly, in terms of the code of conduct cases, because obviously we are different to Scotland in how we manage our case load in this regard, is there any upfront acknowledgement to complainants that, potentially, code of conduct cases can actually take longer, or is it just in the mix?

At the moment, the first thing to say, on your first question about displacement, is that I don't think that's happening at the moment, because we've probably got fewer than 10 cases in the public service complaints workload that are older than 12 months, so it's not a significant number, and those are being progressed by officers alongside younger cases that are also being progressed, if that makes sense.

Code of conduct, at the moment, our key performance indicator, we have one KPI for investigations. Our KPI is that what we're aiming to do is that, on average, it will not take longer than 12 months to investigate a complaint. We’ve not made a distinction between code of conduct complaints and public service complaints. I think you raise a good point though and, going forward, that is something we may need to look at. But, at the moment, it’s just one KPI, and we aim to do all of our investigations within that 12-month period.

I think the challenge, and you’ll recognise it, with the code of conduct cases is it’s quite complex in terms of the investigation, witnesses, the interviewing that has to happen, and multiple witnesses in many instances. We had a team update yesterday and there can be challenges with people coming forward for interviews and not keeping to dates, pushing them back, trying to avoid engaging with us, and some of those things then become very difficult to manage and are outside our immediate control.

In your management meetings and looking at the cases and the KPIs, that disaggregated data is there—

Yes.

—so you do know what the—. If you were to split that KPI, do you know now what that split is? Do you know roughly where it’s at?

Do we know where those figures are at the moment?

At the moment, we have around 20 to 25 cases that are over the 12 months, which is not where we want to be, and we have roughly an investigation case load of around 100 cases. Some of those are suspended. For example, we suspend cases when perhaps police are investigating an issue as well, and then we’ll hold our investigation. So, at the moment, that’s not where we want to be on the code of conduct complaints.

As Michelle was saying, they are very different, and even when we close a case, there is a lot more work to do on them if we refer a case for hearing. So, it is something we need to look at. But we’re also really conscious that they are very personal for the members. We want to close them and progress them as quickly as possible, because we do recognise it’s very stressful when it’s an individual complaint like that. It’s very different to a public body complaint.

And there’s no doubt, to add as well, that I think the events in April had an impact on our staff, as we explained last week. That affected our performance in April and May, there’s no doubt about that. But we are starting to make progress on cases now, which is really pleasing, and we are particularly focusing on our bank workers. We’ve recruited three bank workers with this type of experience who are doing a lot of the drafting for us. But I think, once we get over this hump, we could perhaps reflect and see how long we anticipate and whether we do need to give different messages to people at that early stage of the process on code complaints. But really we do recognise, as I say, that it’s very important for the individual members that we deal with things as quickly as we can.

I know Peter wants to come in just before—. I'll come back to you in a second, Rhianon, okay?

It’s interesting; I always like to know how things work. How do your caseworkers manage such a load? How do they prioritise time? Are you having to take people off new cases because there is a heavier workload on the aged cases, and then you create aged cases because you haven’t been able to get on with them? So, there’s this hiatus in the system that requires some capacity, doesn’t it, really, to clear it, so that you can get onto a nice level playing field and for it to run smoothly? I can see that’s a real dilemma for you. I’m just interested in how you manage that, because that must be really hard for a case officer who is really trying hard. How do you balance their day-to-day work? Do they say, ‘Well, we’ll have one day a week on this case, and we’ll have one day a week on that case’? I’m just interested.

Yes, that is really difficult, and it’s a constant juggling act. As we’ve been saying, because we’ve cleared the older cases on the public service complaints last year, we found that the investigation case loads for our investigators were a lot lower, but because we’ve seen an influx on assessments, we’ve had to spread them out across the office. So, it is that constant juggling act.

As you say, we had the real push at the end of last year to reduce those very old cases, and of course that inevitably meant some other newer cases were sitting there, and now we really need to focus on those. It is a real tension for our staff. They want to give meaningful updates, whether it's to an accused member or a complainant, and it's very frustrating for them when they say that no progress has been made. Everybody has their monthly updates with their managers, and we try and prioritise things usually according to age, but also those quick-wins where we can see those settlements that are available. So, it's constantly trying to review and to see how we can close and progress things.

Yes, I can see that.

Rhianon, we'll come back to you.

Thank you very much, Chair. You've already detailed the reasoning around complaints against your office in terms of timescales or dissatisfaction around public body decision making. Outside of capacity, which seems to be one of the things that is prevalent thematically, are you concerned about the areas of the complaints against the office, after what you've already stated? And what measures are you taking to reduce those types of complaints? It's a slightly tricky question, bearing in mind what you've already just said. Is there any comment on that?

Yes, I think, with complaints against us, against the office, and how we've dealt with people, I think it's just important to put that figure in context. We're talking about 38 complaints that we received across the year out of over 9,800 cases—so, a very small proportion. And of those 38 complaints, 14 were upheld. I think it's important to say that those complaints are dealt with independently within the office, by another team. They wouldn't be dealt with by the person or the team against whom that complaint has been raised. So, it is a very small proportion. Nonetheless, we don't want people who have interactions with us to be dissatisfied, so it is important we respond to it. And those complaints do tend to be about delays, not returning phone calls, timely communications, or perhaps not using the preferred method of communication that that complainant has indicated to us.

Where we've identified an instance where we've fallen short, that is fed back to team managers, back to teams. We have a learning point on our hub, on our intranet, to share that information as well. So, we do try and push that learning back into the organisation. And I think, back to the SQ process that we started talking about at the beginning of the session, that will help to keep that focus on customer service and make sure that we're managing those interactions well, as complaints progress through the office. So, we do take them seriously, they are important, but, to put them in context, it's a very small number in terms of the overall case load that we have as an office.

Thank you. And that is a very small number, as you stated. I would, obviously, though, as a trajectory, be concerned in terms of future capacity around the workload that you've got, and, generally speaking, that will trail, but we'll be watching that. I'm going to move on.

The Finance Committee is due to review the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019 in 2024-25. What is your assessment of how your office has used the new powers, and to what extent have the expected benefits been realised?

Okay. Thank you. So, three key areas here, I suppose, to focus on: the first is our complaints standards work, secondly would be own-initiative investigations, and thirdly what we're doing around oral complaints. On the complaints standards work, I think there's been a huge amount of success in rolling this out. Last year, as we've reported, 56 public bodies had, if you like, signed up to that complaints standards work. They include all local authorities in Wales, all health boards, and, this year, our focus is on housing associations. Our aim, by the end of this financial year, is to have all housing associations—certainly the big ones—involved in the scheme and signed up to the scheme. So, that's really important, because this is about trying to improve how we handle complaints across the public sector. It's about supporting public sector bodies to make sure that when people come to them with concerns and issues, they're well focused on how to deal with them, and they deal with them properly. Because if people get the outcomes they're looking for, or are satisfied with how they're dealt with by those public bodies, they are less likely, then, to track through to us, or to remain dissatisfied. So, raising those standards is important, and when a public body is part of the complaints standards work, it means they've adopted the model complaints process. We support them with training. Our team go out and do a huge amount of training, and are now training the trainers as well, within larger organisations, to try and build their capacity to manage complaints within their own organisations. I must say that, when I go out and talk to public bodies, I consistently get excellent feedback about the quality of that training and the value of that training to public sector bodies.

So, the benefits of this will play out over a longer period of time, because what we essentially want is fewer referrals through to PSOW, not because we don't want them, but because they're dealt with properly at the initial point. We're seeing some early signs that this is having the right level of benefit. So, we've seen a fall last year in the number of local authority complaints—the percentage of local authority complaints that then came through to us—and we would hope, over time, to see that figure also falling for other sectors, particularly health. So that does indicate better handling by those authorities at the first point. But this is work that needs to continue and those are the sorts of benefits that we're looking for.

In terms of the own-initiative investigations, then, last year we completed three. We used the powers to do three extended investigations. So, what that means is that we were actually investigating a complaint, but through the investigation, we identified that, actually, there were other issues that we should be investigating. Now, previously the office wouldn't have been able to do that. Now, through the powers granted to the ombudsman, that can happen, and we did three extended investigations last year. All were within the health sector, and we made a number of recommendations across three reports that have all been delivered. So, those improvements have been taken on board by those health bodies. And one of those reports actually was a public interest report, because the issues we found were so significant that it warranted being a public interest report. Now, if we had just stuck with the issues brought to us by the complainant we wouldn't have gone there, because they hadn't identified that issues a couple of years earlier had actually caused a problem. So, that's just an example of the benefits there.

Yes. In terms of oral complaints, I'm sure you will have noticed in the annual report that we took fewer last year. We slightly changed our approach last year. Instead of automatically taking oral complaints when our staff take a phone call from complainants who indicate they want one, we'll consider whether it is actually something that they are raising that we can consider, and often it isn't something that falls within our office's remit. So, instead of automatically taking that oral complaint, we try and signpost people to the relevant organisation and body.

But what we have been trying to do is focus those oral complaints on callers who really are in need of immediate assistance and help making the complaints. So, for example, on housing repair issues, and where it's really clear that somebody needs that immediate assistance from us. What we have been trying to do is to rebalance our investigation workload rather than being almost exclusively health driven—trying to rebalance that. So, identifying those housing and social care cases, through oral complaints and other general written complaints that we receive, so that we can do what we've always done, which is to try and resolve matters with public bodies and get them to take action to put things right, but also, then, devote some of our investigation resource to those cases to really try and look at those underlying systemic issues, particularly, as I say, in housing and social care. So, we do aim to increase that over the year, but with that targeted approach so that we can be as efficient as possible with that.

Thank you. That's very encouraging. You seem to have achieved what many others haven't in terms of spending 26 per cent less on professional advice for 2023-24. You've also—if I move on from that—increased your computer services budget by £169,000. Is there any information in regard to what that was for? And in terms of the professional advice, how did you achieve that, very briefly, please?

Professional advice first.

Yes. We did shift our approach again last year because of the pressures on the service. If you remember, we really try to take a lot of time when we start investigations to decide which heads of complaint we should take forward, and we only take those really serious matters forward that meet our proportionality test. And on health cases, that has meant that our advice requests to our clinical advisers can be far more focused, which means they spend a lot less time. But also, as a result of our improvement work that we did with Perago Wales, one of the things that came through from our staff and advisers was that we should go to have a single point of contact in our office. So, one of our casework support officers manages that clinical advice work, and that has helped us to improve times on how we find advisers. As I say, we estimate how long a piece of advice should take and what we expect the charges to be, and she works very closely with our finance team and monitors that.

Okay, thank you. You include in the annual report and accounts a breakdown of resource outturn for 2023-24 and 2022-23, with explanations for the variances between the two years. However, you have not included a detailed comparison of the outturn against the estimates for 2023-24. Why is that and why does the breakdown adopt different categories of expenditure than used for the estimate, please?

Do you want to pick that up?

Thanks for that. The presentation, as I understand it, in the accounts is the same as it has been in previous years, and I guess is intended to reflect the requirements of accounting standards and financial reporting requirements. There is—. Just let me—. I think there is, on page 87, a summary of the outturn that is intended to meet accounting requirements. That's the bit that's required. I think there's also, earlier in the report on page 60, there's the line-by-line breakdown of expenditure, and that broadly matches the analysis in the estimate and if there are any supplementary budgets. So, the detail, the breakdown is there on page 60.

Fine. So, you would say that it doesn't adopt different categories of expenditure than for the estimate. You say they're broadly similar.

I think there are two different things. There's one that is the pure accounting requirement, which is the one on page 87, which is what's required by accounting standards and looks at cash and resource outturn, and shows that we spent £5.729 million against a budget of £5.746 million. And then, earlier in the report on page 60, the analysis there does broadly match that in the estimates. And hopefully, that reflects the—I think that reflects the approach in previous years, as well.

Okay, thank you. Moving on then, in terms of your increased engagement work, what measures are you taking to ensure that your communication methods with stakeholders and potential service users are efficient and cost-effective, moving forward?

Do you want me to pick that up?

Yes, please.

Just to start, I guess accessibility and inclusion and increasing people's ability to access our service is one of our strategic aims. So, we're keen to make sure that we do engage in more outreach and engagement activity. And during 2023-24, we engaged with the Ethnic Youth Support Team, with Settled, with RNIB Cymru, with the Gwent citizens panel, Tenant Participation Advisory Service Cymru and All Wales People First. Also, although the Eisteddfod was actually this financial year, we booked and paid for our place there because we were keen to get involved there. It's always a little bit tricky, isn't it, to try and translate that into an exact value-for-money calculation, in that it's not going to be a one-to-one relationship. But what we'll be looking to do over the life of our strategic plan is engage more fully with some of the groups that are under-represented. And our approach generally is to try to engage with existing groups and tie into existing events, because that means that we've got a ready-made audience, in a way, and also reduces costs. So, we're very much aware of how we best use our resources and how we target some of those groups, but we will be monitoring that during the life of the strategic plan.

Okay. Thank you very much. Diolch, Gadeirydd.

And just to say, I did visit your stand at the Eisteddfod, and it was very good to see you there—but that's just a personal opinion. We're going to move on to Peter, and we're getting a little bit short on time, so we're going to move on at pace, if we can.

Yes, we'll curtail a couple of questions, perhaps.

So, just on finance again, your accounts show that you disposed of £137,000 worth of surplus assets in 2023-24, which included computers and furniture, et cetera. Why were these not being used by your office, and how did you get rid of them?

Those of you with particularly good memories of the details for last year's discussions will remember that, this time last year, we were talking about the fact that we had additional surplus assets because of the 43 per cent reduction in our office accommodation. So, we had computers and furniture that was surplus. The accounting arrangements were a little complicated, which is why we talked about them last year. But, broadly, they were end-of-life assets, office furniture and computers. They were declared surplus the previous year, 2022-23, but the auditors wanted us to retain them in the accounts because we hadn't actually disposed of them. We have now disposed of them. The computers were securely destroyed because they were end of life. There isn't a huge market for second-hand office furniture at the moment, but we offered them to charities, individuals and community groups, and I'm happy to say that all of the furniture found a new home without going to landfill.

I'm conscious that your computers would have to be very much—. You know, they've had a lot of data on them in the past and they need to be cleaned out. Isn't there a way that we can recycle those things, though, and give them to the most needy groups who need access to computers in the future? Perhaps that's something worth thinking about—for all organisations, actually.

It's certainly something we can think about. The advice we have had is that there isn't a guaranteed and secure way of doing that, and also, that IT equipment is relatively lower cost than it used to be, and the stuff that we were destroying was end-of-life, fully depreciated and probably not very attractive to other users.

No, quite.

There is a guaranteed way and that's removing the hard drive.

[Inaudible.]

Yes. [Laughter.]

It is a computer, but it doesn't have storage or anything, so you get an external replacement.

Yes, the peripheral—the mice, and the screens, and things could be. But it's something—

Yes. I think they have a longer life.

Yes.

To be clear, it is particularly the hard disks that are securely destroyed. The other elements—. It is a specialist company that do elements of recycling. But I think they're not the easiest things to recycle.

And I'm conscious they do get out of date so fast, actually, and, like you say, some people might not find them very desirable. Anyway, I digress.

You noted in the accounts that an agreement was reached in April 2024 to surrender the lease on the surplus accommodation, which we just talked about. Can you outline what this means for your costs going forward and for future estimates?

Yes. Thank you. As I just mentioned, we have now reduced our office accommodation by 44 per cent, compared with what it was. When we come on to talk about the estimate later on, I guess we may pick this up then, but there's an annual saving of around £105,000 on rent, VAT, service charge, utilities and rates. This is picked up in our estimates, and I guess we'll talk about that later on, but it's one of the things that we talked about with the committee before, and we're pleased now to be able to include that in our estimate for next year.

Thank you, Chris, that's helpful. Can I move on to a couple of questions around future pressures and how they'll be factored into the estimate? Your biennial staff survey has raised concerns about well-being and pressure on staff, with a reduction in the proportion of staff who consider the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales a good place to work. What factors do you think have contributed to that?

I'll pick this one up. Again, some context for this: those figures show, as you say, a disappointing reduction, and we don't want to see that. But in terms of our workforce, 47 people did agree that it was a good place to work, five people disagreed, and 11 people did not know. So, that's the breakdown of the figures. We wouldn't want anyone who works for us to feel that it's not a good place to work, so we do take this very seriously, and we don't want to see it reduce further. I think, from the work that we've done and the discussions with staff, there are a number of things there.

I think there are tensions that exist—and you won't be surprised to hear me say this—between the workload, and the increase in workload, and then the well-being of our staff, and we've touched on that already this morning. There's a tension, I think, between flexible working and people feeling connected to the office and to their teams. People very much like the flexible working and want it to continue, but then they're losing that benefit of working with their teams, and there's something there we need to look at in terms of what's the right balance there.

I think there is something about flexibility versus public service. Some staff may want more flexibility than we could reasonably be providing, because we are providing a public service and it's important we're open and present during certain hours to talk to the public. I think the fourth area that's coming through to us is that we need to make sure we've got a consistent approach to management right across the office, so that people in different teams don't have different experiences. So, those are the areas that we feel we need to focus on in order to address that, going forward, and it's something we are working on currently.

Thank you for that. It's good to know that's being looked at quite hard. And my last question: the estimate notes that an independent researcher will undertake further research following the results of the staff survey. How will the costs of this research be met, what timeline has been set for research to take place, and how will it be published?

That's the further work I just referred to. The cost will be between £7,000 and £8,000. We're going to fund that from the savings we've made from our property rationalisation, and it's work in progress. We haven't completed it yet, but we will obviously be sharing those results with staff and with our advisory panel and the audit and risk assurance committee members.

Great, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Mike.

The estimate states that the cost of the independent review into PSOW processes will be met in-year through savings. Now that the review has concluded, can you outline the cost of the review, and are you aware of what the costs are to implement the associated recommendations?

The review has completed. The final costs are just over £66,000 for the independent review, and, again, we're in the position where we can fund that through our in-year savings on our property costs. So, that will be met through that route. Obviously, it's a one-off, so we're able to do that this year. We're looking at the recommendations and implementation of those at present; we're due to discuss it with our advisory panel next week. Currently, we don't think there's a huge financial implication from the delivery of the recommendations, and we think we'll be able to deal with that within our existing budget. A lot of it's about improving process, changing process and approach. But I think it is reasonable to expect there will be a resource impact, rather than a financial one, and that could be on staff time and back to, again, length of investigations. Some of the recommendations we're going to have to look at closely to make sure they don't further extend the time that we need to investigate code of conduct complaints. So, we think that's manageable within our current resources, but it might have an impact on service standards.

And that £66,000 includes everything—so, any external advice as well as the investigation and the Northern Ireland commissioner's investigation. Everything is in there.

Yes. It includes the commissioner, Dr McCullough, and her team. It includes ancillary costs like legal advice, like translation costs—

What about things like communication advice and that sort of thing as well? Or is that coming under the comms budget?

We didn’t really take communication advice as part of the independent review, to be honest. But it includes everything associated, from the commissioning of that review to the publication of that report that we considered last week.

You estimated a 3 per cent pay award. Is that what you're still estimating?

For next year?

For next year, sorry.

Do you want to pick that one up?

The answer is, 'Yes, at the moment', and I guess the inflation news this morning might support that. I think the greater uncertainty is probably around the current year's pay award, where the local government pay award that we're subject to, and obviously we don't control, is yet to be resolved. I think local government unions are balloting for strike action at the moment, so there may be movement on that. But, yes, at the moment, we're still happy with our 3 per cent estimate for 2025-26.

Thank you very much. The cost of staff increments and additional costs following IT contact retendering will be met through annual savings from your property rationalisation project. Do you intend to continue to use these savings to cover inflationary pressures, going forward?

As you say, that's included in the estimate—£105,000 is the anticipated saving. The proposal in the estimate is to use £51,000 to meet staff increments and increased IT support costs, as you say. The balance then of £54,000 will be available for investment, but once that £51,000 is committed to increments and increased IT support costs, they're gone, in the sense that they're committed for future year budgets as well. So, I think the short answer to the question is, 'No, we couldn't commit to do that on an ongoing basis'. We'll continue to face inflationary pressures, and the pressures that we're under would dwarf the amount that is available. So, £51,000 of that £105,000 will be committed, subject to the budget and the estimate being approved, and that will then be gone.

Because that's in the baseline then, going forward. So, you'll have £50,000-odd left.

Yes.

But that will be eaten up, potentially in-year, on other baseline—? Or do you think that you might have some of that residual then going into the following year?

I think, in terms of what we've said and shared with the committee previously, we recognise that there's a significant need to invest in our service and service improvement. A lot of that will be on IT and digital. You'll recall that we were quite open about wanting to achieve property savings to free up that money for investment, and that's what we would wish to do. So, we wouldn't envisage using that to meet inflationary pressures in future years.

And the £54,000 is going to be spent on IT and digital strategy. In terms of the £51,000 and the £54,000, the £54,000 is IT and digital strategy.

That's right. It's perhaps slightly wider than that in terms of that it's investment in improving our service, but that will primarily be IT and digital strategy, with a focus on customer service, improving customer contact. Michelle mentioned the portal earlier on, which is intended to get round some of the challenges of e-mail and help complainants and public bodies to receive information from us and provide information to us. We'll also look at continuing to develop our cyber resilience, a constant challenge, and also development of our data work. As we've not got our lead data officer in place, I think that will identify more work that we need to do on our data. And with the ongoing increase in case volumes, we’ll continue to look at developing our case management system, to make it easier for staff to use, and also to try and make it quicker and more efficient.

If you don’t get your full estimates, what happens? What is the first thing that doesn’t get done?

I think if we don’t get the full estimate, as we indicated in our paper, there’ll be an impact on staff, because 80 per cent of our budget is spent on staff. And, as you’ve recognised in the conversations we’ve had today, it’s the staff who are at the sharp end doing the actual work here. So, we would be in a position of having to look at holding vacancies, not filling posts. That puts additional pressure on the staff that are left. And if those vacancies aren’t available to be used, then we would have to look at redundancies. We’ve outlined this in our estimate.

I think the other concern would be the lack of ability to invest in some of the areas that Chris has talked about, which is about trying to keep our service modern and efficient and effective. And on cyber resilience, as Chris said, you never finish it, it’s constant, you’re always developing systems to make sure that we can operate safely. So, it would be a concern that we wouldn’t have the money there to invest in that as well, which, I think, increases some of our operating risks. And ultimately all of that has an impact on the service users.

Are you using AI in order to reduce costs?

We don’t use AI at the moment. Just recently, a new IT manager has joined us, and one of the things—amongst many for him—on his remit is to look at this and to advise us on this. There's some work we’re looking to do with other ombudsman bodies as well, who are all grappling with the same issues. So, we don’t at the moment. We know it’s something we need to have a look at. But one of the things we have talked about, and perhaps is more achievable, is around automation and using things like the portal and investment technology to do more automation, to make things easier for our staff, which improves the service to our customers as well. So, that’s all very much in the pot for discussion.

And you’ll come back and tell us all about that next year.

I have a great belief in efficiency savings. I spent a lot of time in local government, where social service directors would sit. If you had social service directors sitting there now, you’d have your estimate and lines would be going through it fairly rapidly. And they would say, ‘This is going to have a serious effect’, and we’d be saying, ‘Well, we haven’t got the money, so we have to live within the resources we’ve been given’. Are you going to be looking to make efficiency savings during the year?

We look at them every year. We continually, like any public body, look at how we can operate more effectively and efficiently. We’re very pleased with the work that the team has done—and Chris has led this work—on the property rationalisation. That delivered a big saving for us last year; it’s difficult to deliver big savings like that every year.

We will continue to look at this, but I will say that the uplift we’re requesting this year is 2 per cent. It was below inflation when we put the paper in; it isn’t below inflation as of this morning. But we’ve kept this as low as we can, because we’re mindful of the pressures on public bodies. We’re mindful we need to use some of our efficiency savings to offset our increased costs. And we’ll continue to look at efficiencies.

I've got no problem with your estimates; perhaps I ought to have said that at the beginning, rather than at the end of that series of questions. But I think it is important that if we are acting in the position we are, in scrutinising expenditure, we do put pressure on efficiencies. And with everybody who comes in here—Peter occasionally, but I normally get in first—we use the words ‘efficiency’ and ‘efficiency savings’.

Peter wants to come in.

It's just on the same theme, really. In your past life, as well, and mine, sometimes you have to invest to create efficiencies—invest to save, transformational change, which might need upfront investment, as long as there’s a good case where it demonstrates that that can be beneficial from a financial perspective or efficiency perspective. So, I don’t think organisations should be frightened of demonstrating cases for transformational change that will make forward efficiencies as well.

Yes, and that goes back to the fact that the money that we are looking to invest, that £54,000, is very much about investing in that space.

Yes.

And it comes from a rationalisation of your office space, so there was an efficiency from last year.

The classic example of that, historically, was when we moved from manual payroll to computerised payroll and when we moved from typewriters to word processors. Those had high upfront costs but they brought in huge annual savings.

I can't even remember that long ago, Mike. [Laughter.]

Finally from me, can you provide an update on progress regarding your ongoing code of conduct case and the employment tribunal? Are there any contingencies regarding the costs in place for either of these cases, or will you come back with a supplementary budget?

Katrin will take that one.

Thank you. In terms of the code of conduct case, in July, we received notification from the court that there will be a permission hearing on 13 November. The case is still at that early stage where the appellant needs permission to bring the statutory appeal. In April, the court dismissed and refused that application on a paper basis, but the appellant took up the opportunity to ask for his application to be renewed. And, in accordance with the court process, there is a hearing scheduled. So, I think, in terms of that case, depending on the outcome on the thirteenth, we will know where we are at that point and what we are facing. So, we will know at that point whether we'll need to make a financial contingency for that. Obviously, we will update the committee on that after the hearing.

In terms of the employment tribunal matter, we received notice that the claim was dismissed by the employment tribunal in September. The order was dated 20 September. And that was because the claimant did not comply with directions and orders from the tribunal.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Okay. Just a couple of things that we just want to mop up quickly—I thought we were going to run out of time, but we haven't. I've got just a quick question. In the accounts, at 31 March 2024, there was cash not drawn down of £37,000. Could you explain what that is in relation to?

The £37,000 related to income that was received during 2023-24, and it was treated as reducing the amount that needed to be withdrawn, and that wasn't the right treatment. It shouldn't have been handled in that way. So, we agreed with Audit Wales and with the Welsh Government that that's how it should be reflected in the accounts. And it will be drawn down as part of the 2024-25 total draw-down.

Okay. Thank you very much. And finally, do you have any plans to publish the staff survey results alongside the annual reports and estimates for scrutiny, going forward—maybe adding in to some of the conversations that we've been having around that?

Yes, we haven't previously. PSOW hasn't previously published the staff survey results, so there isn't an intention to publish these. But, if the committee wants us to consider that for the future, then we can do so.

Thank you for that. I think that brings us to the end of our questions, unless my colleagues have anything further to ask. No. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you for your time this morning. It was a very informative session. Actually, the one thing you haven't said, I don't think, on the record, just for the people watching: how much are you looking for as an increase, as a percentage? We've talked about inflation and we've talked about other things, but—

A 2 per cent uplift in our budget for next year.

Thank you very much for that. Obviously, there'll be a transcript for you to check for accuracy. We will then report on this and it'll form part of the budget process. So, that brings us to time today on that issue.

I propose, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi) that the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of this meeting. Is everyone content? I see that they are. Thank you.

We'll go private.