What sort of complaints do you look at?

We provide a free, independent and impartial service for handling complaints about public services in Scotland.

We deal with complaints after they have completed the complaints procedure of the organisation that delivered the service.  This means that we deal with complaints that have not been resolved by the organisation.

These include complaints about councils, the National Health Service (NHS), housing associations, the Scottish Government, colleges and universities and many other Scottish public organisations.

We look at complaints from people who remain unhappy with the service they have received or not received from a public service provider. We cannot investigate a decision just because someone doesn’t like it.  The SPSO Act 2002 states that we can only consider a complaint if a member of the public claims to have suffered hardship or injustice as a result of maladministration or service failure in the provision of a public service. 

See the Our Process section of this website for further information.