Can the public have confidence in the recent External Evaluation of the Local Government Ombudsman?
At the time of writing, the
Communities and Local Government Select Committee is carrying out a further inquiry into the
work and performance of the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO).
The LGO is something I have taken a keen interest in since 1999, when I represented a family who had experienced maladministration from their local council with their complaint to the LGO. In the course of my dealings with the LGO, I realised that they were a dishonest and completely unrealiable outfit that was very much biased in favour of local councils.
Dealing with the appalling local authority in question, and then dealing with the equally appalling LGO, was a traumatising experience, so I gave myself a few years to recharge my batteries before setting up LGO Watch in 2003: a national campaign I directed until 2008.
The LGO is a law unto itself, but it reports to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee (CLG Committee), which until very recently has been impervious and indifferent to the evidence of dishonesty and systemic maladministration at the LGO. Even now, after recently telling the LGO it had to "up its game," they seemed to be more concerned about inefficiencies than about complainants getting regularly and deliberately stitched up.
Last year, the CLG Committee told the LGO that there had to be an independent External Review of the LGO, an LGO staff satisfaction survey, and a new Customer Satisfaction Survey. The problem is that the LGO is being allowed by the CLG Committee to commission these surveys themselves. This, in spite of the fact that it has been demonstrated to the Committee that the LGO manipulates the process and the reported outcome of surveys in order to avoid negative publicity.
The LGO published a "summary" of their Staff Satisfaction Survey on their website, together with their response to it. What they did not reckon on was that someone who had received the undoctored version of the original staff survey report would leak it to LGO Watch. Predictably, the "summary" of the survey the LGO published bears little resemblance to the actual survey report, a copy of which I have sent to the CLG Committee.
The LGO was also allowed to commission its own independent External Review, and to appoint its own independent External Review team. It has now published its “External Evaluation of the Local Government Ombudsman in England.” There were three members of the External Review team:
"The Team was Chaired by Richard Thomas CBE, Chairman of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council and former Information Commissioner.1 The other members of the Team were Jim Martin, the current Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and former Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland;2 and Dr Richard Kirkham,3 an academic from the University of Sheffield with previous research experience of ombudsman schemes." (P4)
So one member was a former Information Commissioner. Another was the current Scottish Public Service Ombudsman. And the third, Dr Richard Kirkham, was an academic at Sheffield University who was already known to LGO Watch following an article he wrote in 2005: “A Complainant's View of the Local Government Ombudsman,” was published in the “Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law,” Volume 27, Issue 3-4.
Dr Kirkham’s
article was published in 2005, following the Select Committee inquiry into the LGO
where the investigation was aborted when the General Election was
called, and at a time when the LGO was starting to receive very negative
publicity as a result of LGO Watch evidence reaching the public domain and the newspapers.
Dr Kirkham apparently played a major role in the drafting of the External Review. In the Preface to the External Review, we are told:
"Richard Kirkham undertook the bulk of the research and drafting of this Report for which his colleagues are most grateful." (p4)
The following paragraph from the External Evaluation is quite an endorsement, and is inconsistent with the evidence provided by LGO Watch since 2003, and the experience of hundreds of complainants to the LGO who contacted us:
“The current programme of change does not undermine our view that the LGO is an organisation
made up of dedicated and hard-working people who deliver appropriate
administrative justice on a daily basis. We also recognise that the LGO
has a long track record of being a reflective organisation that has
often been a leading innovator in its field.” (p4)
Needless
to say, the Local Government Ombudsman seemed very pleased at this endorsement, and announced the following on its website:
“LGO welcomes independent confirmation that it is a fair and effective Ombudsman
An
independent external evaluation of the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO)
is published today. It confirms that the LGO is independent and
accountable; and it provides clear evidence that the public have access
to a fair and effective route to redress when they have complaints about local public services and social care providers.”
Dr Kirkham’s 2005 article was published following the ODPM Select Committee's Evidence Session where, for the first time in the history of the LGO, the institution faced questions as to its impartiality, honesty and efficacy. (The ODPM Committee is now the CLG Committee.) LGO Watch had been set up in 2003, and in 2005 we provided detailed evidence to the Committee of
how complainants to the LGO were being treated unfairly, and of how the
LGO was manipulating its Customer Satisfaction Surveys, whose results were still nonetheless quite damning of the LGO, even after they had been manipulated.
The Select Committee evidence session on the LGO was held on 15 March 2005, and Jad Adams’s “Thunderer” column was published in the Times on the same day, criticising the LGO http://thetim.es/RfRqGd. The LGO replied with a PR campaign, and on 26 April 2005, a sympathetic interview with the Ombudsman was published in the Times http://thetim.es/Re3Xya. Dr Kirkham’s article was published in December 2005. It bore the title, “A Complainant’s View of the Local Government Ombudsman.” We were astonished because Dr Kirkham gave absolutely no indication in his article that he had ever been a complainant to the LGO, and absolutely no indication that he had even spoken to any complainants to the LGO in order to find out their perspective.
The Select Committee evidence session on the LGO was held on 15 March 2005, and Jad Adams’s “Thunderer” column was published in the Times on the same day, criticising the LGO http://thetim.es/RfRqGd. The LGO replied with a PR campaign, and on 26 April 2005, a sympathetic interview with the Ombudsman was published in the Times http://thetim.es/Re3Xya. Dr Kirkham’s article was published in December 2005. It bore the title, “A Complainant’s View of the Local Government Ombudsman.” We were astonished because Dr Kirkham gave absolutely no indication in his article that he had ever been a complainant to the LGO, and absolutely no indication that he had even spoken to any complainants to the LGO in order to find out their perspective.
It was complainants who had provided the evidence to the
Committee of LGO maladministration and dishonesty, and now Dr Kirkham
had published a sympathetic article on the LGO which he claimed to
be "a complainant's view." Perhaps a surprising title, given that he made no reference in his article to ever having been a complainant to the LGO; given that, in his article, he casually dismissed the evidence provided by real
complainants to the Committee; and given that he did not make any effort to
contact LGO Watch to ask for our perspective
for the purposes of researching his
article.
Where in his article Dr Kirkham did refer to evidence that we as complainants had provided to the Committee - evidence that was published in the ODPM Committee’s report - he did so selectively and constructed straw men to attack, completely ignoring the detailed analysis of and commentary on the MORI Customer Satisfaction Survey that we had provided to the Committee. If Dr Kirkham's article was really "a complainant's view of the LGO" of some description, then it was clearly a very bizarre one indeed.
It is worrying that an academic writing an article that purported to be from the perspective of a complainant took so little interest in the very instruments that had provided evidence of real complainants’ views: the 1995 and 1999 MORI LGO Customer Satisfaction Surveys, and the analysis of them provided in the 2005 LGO Watch submission to the Committee. Instead, Dr Kirkham disregards the devastating and valid accusations of the LGO made by real complainants to the Committee, and focuses on attacking accusations that were not made by LGO Watch, and that would not be made by any informed and intelligent complainant.
Where in his article Dr Kirkham did refer to evidence that we as complainants had provided to the Committee - evidence that was published in the ODPM Committee’s report - he did so selectively and constructed straw men to attack, completely ignoring the detailed analysis of and commentary on the MORI Customer Satisfaction Survey that we had provided to the Committee. If Dr Kirkham's article was really "a complainant's view of the LGO" of some description, then it was clearly a very bizarre one indeed.
It is worrying that an academic writing an article that purported to be from the perspective of a complainant took so little interest in the very instruments that had provided evidence of real complainants’ views: the 1995 and 1999 MORI LGO Customer Satisfaction Surveys, and the analysis of them provided in the 2005 LGO Watch submission to the Committee. Instead, Dr Kirkham disregards the devastating and valid accusations of the LGO made by real complainants to the Committee, and focuses on attacking accusations that were not made by LGO Watch, and that would not be made by any informed and intelligent complainant.
In Dr Kirkham’s article, he refers to the evidence submitted by dissatisfied complainants that was published by the ODPM Committee following the 2005 Evidence Session on the Role and Effectiveness of the LGO. He is clearly aware of the evidence presented by LGO Watch and by our supporters, of LGO bias and maladministration, and he refers to my submission in his article, so it is a reasonable assumption that he read it. Those submitting evidence to the Committee had their submissions rejected if they focused on the content and detail of their individual complaints. Instead, complainants were expected to present a wider, more general picture of systemic and procedural
concerns. The submissions of several LGO Watch supporters were rejected
because they did not meet this requirement, and their submissions were not published.
The LGO Watch submission, which I wrote as the then director, focused on evidence that the LGO was biased in favour of local authorities, and that its MORI Customer Satisfaction Survey indicated an alarmingly high rate of customer dissatisfaction with the LGO’s service. This dissatisfaction was even shared by 50% of those whose complaints were successfully upheld by the LGO. Our submission also focused on strong evidence that the LGO had manipulated the process of the Survey, so its outcome would have been even more critical of the LGO if this manipulation had not taken place.
The LGO Watch submission, which I wrote as the then director, focused on evidence that the LGO was biased in favour of local authorities, and that its MORI Customer Satisfaction Survey indicated an alarmingly high rate of customer dissatisfaction with the LGO’s service. This dissatisfaction was even shared by 50% of those whose complaints were successfully upheld by the LGO. Our submission also focused on strong evidence that the LGO had manipulated the process of the Survey, so its outcome would have been even more critical of the LGO if this manipulation had not taken place.
In his 2005 article, Dr
Kirkham decided to make no reference to this crucial evidence presented in the
LGO Watch submission. Not
only this, but in his 2005 article, he says:
“There has never been any serious allegation that the LGO act in any other way but according to the highest standards of public conduct.” (ibid., p 388).
This was an extraordinary thing to say. In this one sentence, Dr
Kirkham dismisses the detailed evidence provided to the Committee of LGO
bad practice as not being
“serious”. Our evidence was not even treated with the courtesy of a statement of its content, an evaluation, and an attempted refutation. It was simply dismissed out-of-hand as though it was not worth a moment's consideration: even though the evidence provided to the ODPM Committee was considered to be "serious" enough to formed the basis for several questions posed to the LGOs during the evidence session.
Just a reminder, at this point, of who Dr Kirkham is. He was one of the three individuals commissioned by the Local Government Ombudsman to conduct an independent external evaluation of the LGO: an evaluation that had been requested by the Select Committee. Dr Kirkham also had a very significant role in the external evaluation:
"Richard Kirkham undertook the bulk of the research and drafting of this Report for which his colleagues are most grateful." (p4)
Where the integrity of the LGO is concerned, I have provided evidence in my 2005 and 2012 submissions (submission 1 and submission 2) to the Select Committee of how dishonestly the LGO outfit operates. Evidence abounds in the experience of individual complainants, but one only has to look at how the LGO manipulated the process and the reported results of their 1995 and 1999 MORI Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
There is even one very recent example of LGO dishonesty that I discovered while reading through the LGO’s recent "summary" and response to the Staff Satisfaction Survey, which I compared to the actual Report on the results of that Survey that had been leaked to LGO Watch by a member of staff with access to it. In amongst the damage limitation attempt that was the LGO’s response to the damning Survey outcome, the LGO stated:
At the beginning of his article, Dr Kirkham refers to the 2005 submissions to the ODMP Committee, and says,
Just a reminder, at this point, of who Dr Kirkham is. He was one of the three individuals commissioned by the Local Government Ombudsman to conduct an independent external evaluation of the LGO: an evaluation that had been requested by the Select Committee. Dr Kirkham also had a very significant role in the external evaluation:
"Richard Kirkham undertook the bulk of the research and drafting of this Report for which his colleagues are most grateful." (p4)
Where the integrity of the LGO is concerned, I have provided evidence in my 2005 and 2012 submissions (submission 1 and submission 2) to the Select Committee of how dishonestly the LGO outfit operates. Evidence abounds in the experience of individual complainants, but one only has to look at how the LGO manipulated the process and the reported results of their 1995 and 1999 MORI Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
There is even one very recent example of LGO dishonesty that I discovered while reading through the LGO’s recent "summary" and response to the Staff Satisfaction Survey, which I compared to the actual Report on the results of that Survey that had been leaked to LGO Watch by a member of staff with access to it. In amongst the damage limitation attempt that was the LGO’s response to the damning Survey outcome, the LGO stated:
“39% believe we provide a great service to our customers but 34% are undecided.”
There was no mention in this "summary" of any staff member actually disagreeing with the statement that they provided a “great service” to their customers.
This surely gives the impression that no-one had said they positively disagreed with the statement. But the way this data has been presented in the LGO’s response distracts from the fact that 27% of the LGO's own staff positively disagreed with the statement that the LGO provided a great service to their customers, and that 7% of this 27% strongly disagreed with the statement, resulting in a total of 61% of staff either actively disagreeing with the statement, or else feeling unable to actively agree with the statement. This can only have been deliberate misrepresentation of their staff’s opinions, and it is so typical of the spin-doctoring with which the LGO attempts to dupe both the public and those principled politicians who would not tolerate the behaviour of the LGO if they were fully aware of what is happening.
“In amongst these submissions, there were even
proposals for the abolition of the LGO [...] To a certain extent, such
criticisms misunderstand the purpose of public sector redress mechanisms
and the remit of the Ombudsmen.”
Although Dr Kirkham here associates the proposal to abolish the LGO with a misunderstanding of "the purpose of public sector redress mechanisms and the remit of the Ombudsmen," the abolition of the Local Government Ombudsman was proposed in a 1995 report by Sir Geoffrey Chipperfield, after the Government at the time asked him to carry out a fundamental review of the necessity for and functions of the LGO. One might imagine that Sir Geoffrey had a rather good understanding of "the purpose of public sector redress mechanisms and the remit of the Ombudsmen."
Although Dr Kirkham here associates the proposal to abolish the LGO with a misunderstanding of "the purpose of public sector redress mechanisms and the remit of the Ombudsmen," the abolition of the Local Government Ombudsman was proposed in a 1995 report by Sir Geoffrey Chipperfield, after the Government at the time asked him to carry out a fundamental review of the necessity for and functions of the LGO. One might imagine that Sir Geoffrey had a rather good understanding of "the purpose of public sector redress mechanisms and the remit of the Ombudsmen."
People will be looking for a very long time to find any proposal to abolish the LGO among the 2005 submissions to the Committee that indicated a misunderstanding of "the purpose of public sector redress mechanisms
and the remit of the Ombudsmen." With the LGO Watch submission I drafted, I was the only person who had submitted evidence calling for the abolition of the LGO as an alternative to radical reform in the 2005 ODPM Committee Report on the LGO.
So I can be the only person to whom Dr Kirkham was referring in this respect. I have never been someone who misunderstands the purpose of public
sector redress mechanisms or the remit of the Ombudsman. When I was
Director of LGO Watch, I repeatedly explained to many people who contacted me,
that the LGO could only investigate complaints that fell within his
jurisdiction, and that even then, he could only investigate complaints
where there was prima facie evidence of maladministration combined with evidence that not only had injustice been suffered, but significant injustice.
I was also fully aware that there were time limit restrictions, that the local authority complaints procedure had to have been exhausted, and that there had to be no parallel legal action taking place in order for a complaint to be considered by the LGO.
Nowhere in my submissions or campaigning have I ever expected the LGO to act outside his legal jurisdiction, or to relax his criterion of requiring prima facie evidence of maladministration with significant injustice. In fact, these are criteria and restrictions that I fully support, given that I have always been infinitely more concerned about grave injustices that affected very vulnerable people and their families, that could actually have brought about the loss of their lives or their mental health, than about any other issues that complainants were taking to the LGO.
Nowhere in my submissions or campaigning have I ever expected the LGO to act outside his legal jurisdiction, or to relax his criterion of requiring prima facie evidence of maladministration with significant injustice. In fact, these are criteria and restrictions that I fully support, given that I have always been infinitely more concerned about grave injustices that affected very vulnerable people and their families, that could actually have brought about the loss of their lives or their mental health, than about any other issues that complainants were taking to the LGO.
Dr Kirkham was clearly referring in the above quotation to my own submission, as he makes reference to “EV 26” (which was my submission) after making his point. Yet nowhere in my submission is there the slightest shred of evidence that I “[misunderstood] the purpose of public sector redress mechanisms or the remit of the Ombudsman.” On the contrary: I gave very clear and detailed evidence that this was not the case. Dr Kirkham’s approach was to refer to my statement about LGO abolition, and then to create a straw man to attack, instead of attacking the points I actually made. So the views that Dr Kirkham dismissed were not by any stretch of the imagination my own views. This is Dr Kirkham, the independent external evaluator who was commissioned by the LGO, and who played such a major role in drafting the report for the Select Committee.
On page 384, Dr Kirkham’s article continues with an exploration of the LGO’s need to make the public aware of the LGO service. As he has already declared a belief that the LGO behaves with such a high
degree of probity, and dismisses the counterevidence as not being
“serious”, he clearly cannot appreciate that encouraging more public use of an outfit that systematically stitches people up after telling them they will be treated justly, only serves to increase the number of people who get stitched up.
On page 386, Dr Kirkham
explores the limitations of the LGO’s remit, which correctly includes the point that
the LGO is not allowed to look at the merits of a decision of a local
authority taken “in the exercise of a discretion vested in that authority.” This again has always been something of which I and other senior members of LGO Watch have been very much aware, and that we have never wanted to contest. Yet this is a very good target for Dr Kirkham to attack, even though LGO Watch was not associated with it:
“Judging
from many of the consumer complaints made to the Select Committee on
the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the failure of the LGO to
review the merits of a local authority decision probably lies at the
heart of much of the dissatisfaction that some members of the public experience with the LGO.”
This line of attack continues on page 386, where Dr Kirkham writes about the
disappointment of those whose complaints are not investigated by the LGO
because they fall outside the LGO's jurisdiction, or for the various other reasons to which I have referred above. What Dr Kirkham presents as complainants’ objections
bear no relevance to the arguments made by the current and previous
Directors of LGO Watch in our 2005 and 2012 submissions.
On page 388 Dr Kirkham states that
On page 388 Dr Kirkham states that
“[...] the public should be entitled to expect the highest standards of conduct and impartiality from the Ombudsman. Hence, it is a worry that in some quarters there is a perception that the LGO is too familiar with local authorities (Select Committee on the ODPM, 2004-2005, Ev 16-28). This perception has mostly been derived from the fact that two out of three present LGOs were Chief Executives of local authorities before moving to their present post (Local Government Ombudsman, 2005).”
But here, Dr Kirkham posits a cause that is in fact an effect. It was LGO Watch that claimed the Ombudsmen were too close to local authorities. We did not derive this perception from the fact that Ombudsmen tended to be ex-council CEOs. We derived the perception that the Ombudsmen were too close to local authorities from the fact that we had observed so much pro-council bias. We had observed this bias not only in our own personal experience of complaining to them, but also in evidence available in LGO annual reports, in the data relating to their published Customer Satisfaction Surveys, and in the ongoing dishonesty and subterfuge we experienced from their office as we conducted the ongoing LGO Watch campaign. This was what caused the perception that the Ombudsmen were biased in favour of local authorities. The fact that, in 2005, two of the Ombudsmen were ex-local authority CEOs merely provided a reasonable explanation as to why such pro-council bias existed. As Dr Kirkham did not bother to speak to the real complainants at LGO Watch before writing "a complainant's view," we did not have the opportunity to explain this to him.
On page 389, Dr Kirkham bizarrely writes about “silencing” critics of the LGO:
“Improving the openness and transparency of the work of the LGO through regular public scrutiny would probably go a long way towards silencing critics of the post.”
Surely what is important is "reassuring" and "satisfying" critics of the LGO, and not "silencing" us. If we were reassured, we would be silenced, of course. But it seems a very odd word to use in this context. What was Dr Kirkham thinking of?
On page 390, Dr Kirkham writes about delays during LGO investigations:Surely what is important is "reassuring" and "satisfying" critics of the LGO, and not "silencing" us. If we were reassured, we would be silenced, of course. But it seems a very odd word to use in this context. What was Dr Kirkham thinking of?
“Such delays have even opened up the LGO to allegations of maladministration!”
So Dr Kirkham decided to use an exclamation mark here. What does that express? That the incredibly high levels of probity and efficiency of the Local Government Ombudsman are such that any suggestion the LGO could be guilty of maladministration is simply absurd? Nothing more than a joke worthy of an exclamation mark?
Yet the External Evaluation team were supposed to be investigating this very possibility: whether the LGO was itself guilty of a high level of maladministration. This was surely not something to be rejected out-of-hand with a dismissive exclamation mark. Indeed, a member of the CLG Committee, Mr Simon Danczuk MP, himself raised the possibility that the LGO was committing maladministration in his piece for the Guardian of 26 July 2012 http://bit.ly/N8gQ7l entitled “Local Government Ombudsman risks becoming 'pickled in aspic'“:
So Dr Kirkham decided to use an exclamation mark here. What does that express? That the incredibly high levels of probity and efficiency of the Local Government Ombudsman are such that any suggestion the LGO could be guilty of maladministration is simply absurd? Nothing more than a joke worthy of an exclamation mark?
Yet the External Evaluation team were supposed to be investigating this very possibility: whether the LGO was itself guilty of a high level of maladministration. This was surely not something to be rejected out-of-hand with a dismissive exclamation mark. Indeed, a member of the CLG Committee, Mr Simon Danczuk MP, himself raised the possibility that the LGO was committing maladministration in his piece for the Guardian of 26 July 2012 http://bit.ly/N8gQ7l entitled “Local Government Ombudsman risks becoming 'pickled in aspic'“:
“The
ombudsman's 2011 Strategic Review, which it avoided publishing,
suggested the bottom 20% of performers among the team handled some 10%
cases. Some corporate functions within the ombudsman boasted staffing
levels that were difficult
to justify and that a significant proportion of operational support
existed only to provide basic administrative and office services.
We heard of cases sitting in the commissioner's office for 12 months. A body responsible for examining maladministration was now being accused of maladministration because of its lethargic and cumbersome approach. The ombudsman's response wasn't encouraging. It was sketchy about plans for transformation and appeared to learn little from good practice in Scotland and Ireland.
There is no doubt the ombudsman needs to dramatically improve, and though it must retain its independence the Department for Communities and Local Government and parliament itself must push for that change.”
On page 391, Dr Kirkham writes about the merits of local settlements, but does not explore the effect on complainants of having a “local settlement” effectively imposed on them by the LGO should a local authority agree to it, but the complainant regard the remedy as inadequate. This is something that actually violates the definition of the word “settlement”, which surely normally implies agreement – perhaps with some compromise - by both or all parties concerned. Of course, where complainants are concerned, the alternative to rejecting a “local settlement” proposed by the LGO is to have the investigation terminated and to get nothing at all.
Dr Kirkham makes a statement on page 392 that merits closer examination:
“[...] the LGO are there to perform a number of roles and, of those roles, publicly calling local authorities to account is one of the least important.”
My view is that the taxpayers who fund the LGO would have little sympathy for Dr Kirkham’s position on this matter. One of the greatest checks and balances on the behaviour of a public authority, or of any person in public life, is the possibility of being publicly called to account: the essence of “accountability”. The priority of the LGO should indeed be to provide a remedy for a complainant who has suffered maladministration with significant injustice and harm at the hands of his local authority. But any suggestion that calling local authorities to account for maladministration should be “one of the least important roles” of the LGO does the citizen and taxpayer a disservice. It is the kind of attitude that LGO Watch associates with the LGO, whose office has a very strong reluctance to call local authorities to account. Indeed, the experience of LGO Watch activists is that the LGO does all he can to disguise, excuse and whitewash local authority maladministration, which, as a result, is massively underidentified and underreported.
In contrast to the positive External Evaluation report on the LGO that has been drafted by Dr Kirkham and his colleagues, many of the LGO's own staff have far less confidence in the LGO, as was expressed in the damning results of the LGO's Staff Survey that the CLG Committee required them to carry out. Although the LGO published a highly selective and doctored "summary" and response to the Survey on their website, the actual Staff Survey Report was leaked to LGO Watch by someone who obviously wanted the public to know the truth. I have sent a copy of this leaked report to the CLG Select Committee, and it may form the content of a future blog.
For the public to have confidence that an independent external review of a body is truly an independent external review, it should surely only be carried out by people who are completely independent from the body being reviewed. The LGO were founder members of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association (BIOA). Dr Kirkham certainly was a member of the BIOA in the recent past, and may still be a member of it, for all I know (Please click on the link below and scroll to near bottom: “Member of British and Irish Ombudsman Association” http://www.shef.ac.uk/law/staff/academic/rkirkham .) The LGO is also a member of the BIOA.
Professional associations tend to function as a
union that exists for the benefit and support of their members.
Accordingly, I do not see how one member of an association can be
considered to be truly independent from another member where the investigation of professional good practice is concerned.
Much of this blog has been dedicated to Dr Kirkham and his surprising views expressed in his 2005 article, and to the way that his article did an injustice to the evidence presented to the ODPM Committee in 2005 by real complainants to the LGO. There were two other Review Team members. Mr Jim Martin, as the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, was also criticised by Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Watch in similar ways to which LGO Watch criticised the LGO. Yet he was commissioned as someone the public was meant to regard as impartial. As the SPSO, Mr Martin was also almost certainly a member of BIOS, and perhaps still is.
Mr Richard Thomas was the third Review Team member. He was the Information Commissioner at one time, which is essentially just another name for an ombudsman. Legally, the LGO are also commissioners, of course. In 2009 he was elected as Chairman of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Justice_and_Tribunals_Council
In 2010 the Government wanted to abolish the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/965/96504.htm
but it has only recently folded:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Justice_and_Tribunals_Council
If the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council had been doing their job properly, a component of which was to keep under review administrative justice, then the LGO, the SPSO and the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales would have been improved a long time ago. Furthermore, if they were doing a good job, the question must be asked as to why the Government abolished them. The ex-Chairperson of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council was now being asked to review the performance of the LGO, when he should have already identified LGO maladministration when he was the Chairperson, but did not.
However one decides to describe the professional relationship between the LGO and the External Evaluation team, it appears to be a very incestuous one, and not one that inspires public confidence in objectivity and true independence. Instead we see the BIOA, the AJ&TC, Ombudsmen, and an academic who wrote a very pro-LGO article in 2005 that ignored and the evidence provided by real complainants in favour of straw men he could easily attack.
Much of this blog has been dedicated to Dr Kirkham and his surprising views expressed in his 2005 article, and to the way that his article did an injustice to the evidence presented to the ODPM Committee in 2005 by real complainants to the LGO. There were two other Review Team members. Mr Jim Martin, as the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, was also criticised by Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Watch in similar ways to which LGO Watch criticised the LGO. Yet he was commissioned as someone the public was meant to regard as impartial. As the SPSO, Mr Martin was also almost certainly a member of BIOS, and perhaps still is.
Mr Richard Thomas was the third Review Team member. He was the Information Commissioner at one time, which is essentially just another name for an ombudsman. Legally, the LGO are also commissioners, of course. In 2009 he was elected as Chairman of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Justice_and_Tribunals_Council
In 2010 the Government wanted to abolish the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/965/96504.htm
but it has only recently folded:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Justice_and_Tribunals_Council
If the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council had been doing their job properly, a component of which was to keep under review administrative justice, then the LGO, the SPSO and the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales would have been improved a long time ago. Furthermore, if they were doing a good job, the question must be asked as to why the Government abolished them. The ex-Chairperson of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council was now being asked to review the performance of the LGO, when he should have already identified LGO maladministration when he was the Chairperson, but did not.
However one decides to describe the professional relationship between the LGO and the External Evaluation team, it appears to be a very incestuous one, and not one that inspires public confidence in objectivity and true independence. Instead we see the BIOA, the AJ&TC, Ombudsmen, and an academic who wrote a very pro-LGO article in 2005 that ignored and the evidence provided by real complainants in favour of straw men he could easily attack.
Any amount of evidence can be rejected as an indication of bias, if the person evaluating the evidence is, for any reason, simply unwilling to see the bias. Although a legitimate judgment of bias will be based on reasonable evidence,
it is ultimately a subjective interpretation: and those people who have
vested interests in not seeing bias will always be able to say that, in
their opinion, no bias is in evidence, and they may be skilled in selecting the counter-evidence they adduce to justify their position.
Those of us who have campaigned since 2003 to have the systemic maladministration, subterfuge and dishonesty of the Local Government Ombudsman exposed, have serious misgivings about the accuracy and objectivity of the External Evaluation into the LGO that has just been carried out. Most people do not realise how central a role the Local Government Ombudsman plays in encouraging bad practice and maladministration by local authorities. The fact that local authorities realise they have nothing to fear from their a friendly and biased LGO outfit means they can afford to be more relaxed about committing maladminstration and bad practice. This results in worse local authority services for local taxpayers, and the risk that any one of us could be seriously stitched-up one day, and have nowhere to turn to for justice.
It remains to be seen whether the CLG Select Committee finally manage to recognise the LGO for what it is, and if they do, whether they will care enough to do something about it.
© Gary Powell, 2013
Those of us who have campaigned since 2003 to have the systemic maladministration, subterfuge and dishonesty of the Local Government Ombudsman exposed, have serious misgivings about the accuracy and objectivity of the External Evaluation into the LGO that has just been carried out. Most people do not realise how central a role the Local Government Ombudsman plays in encouraging bad practice and maladministration by local authorities. The fact that local authorities realise they have nothing to fear from their a friendly and biased LGO outfit means they can afford to be more relaxed about committing maladminstration and bad practice. This results in worse local authority services for local taxpayers, and the risk that any one of us could be seriously stitched-up one day, and have nowhere to turn to for justice.
It remains to be seen whether the CLG Select Committee finally manage to recognise the LGO for what it is, and if they do, whether they will care enough to do something about it.
© Gary Powell, 2013
