We can take complaints about schools. You will need to complete the local complaints process first and it is also important that you know there are some restrictions on what we can look at.

We can take complaints from children who are old enough to understand the process and, if your child is over 12 years old, we will ask you to show you have their consent if you are taking the complaint forward on their behalf. Our complaint form includes a section that lets you do this easily. If you have any questions about this, please contact us.

While the SPSO Act does not give a definition of maladministration, we use the following as examples of the kind of failings that come under the heading of maladministration:

Ombudsmen deal with complaints from ordinary citizens about certain public bodies or organisations providing services on their behalf.

The SPSO looks into complaints about most organisations providing public services in Scotland.  Our job is to give an independent and impartial decision on complaints and we also have a statutory role in improving complaints handling by organisations under our remit.

Most of the work of considering complaints is done by SPSO staff called Complaints Reviewers.  We receive around 4000 complaints every year. The SPSO Act 2002 allows the Ombudsman to delegate functions, which means that he can ask other people to do things on his behalf, such as look at complaints.

The Our Process section of this website explains how we look into complaints.

Any person or organisation who is a member of the public for the purposes of Section 5 (6) of the SPSO Act 2002.  This excludes a number of public authorities, including local authorities.  We can, however, take complaints from any customer of a licensed water or sewerage provider within our jurisdiction.

We cannot accept complaints from community councils on their own behalf.  Section 5 of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2002 defines a ‘member of the public’.  We took legal advice on this, and were advised that a community council is not a member of the public under the terms of the Act.   A Scottish Parliamentary committee has also looked at this and confirmed that a community council cannot complain directly to us.

We sometimes receive multiple complaints about a council's decision to close a school or public facilities, or where members of a local community strongly oppose a planning application.  If we decide to investigate how such a decision was made, we're very likely to take one generally representative complaint, investigate that and let the other complainants know the outcome. This is what we did with a complaint on which we reported in May 2010.

No - we treat each complaint on its own merits. And our Act does not allow us to accept petitions or other broad based community representations.

We take the view that a single complaint made by an individual carries just as much weight as a group of people making a complaint. So when we get a large number of complaints about a particular issue, such as building a school or the closure of public facilities, we don’t treat the subject matter any differently from when someone brings us a complaint that only affects them.

No.  We do not name the person who made the complaint, and usually refer to them as Mr/Mrs/Ms C.

More information about how we investigate and report on complaints.

Our legislation says that we must carry out our investigations in private. We cannot comment on ongoing investigations and when we make reports public at the end of an investigation, we take care to anonymise individuals.