Festive closure 

Our office will be closed for the festive period from 25 December 2025 and will reopen on Monday 5 January 2026. Our phone line will close at 11am on 24 December 2025.

You can still submit your complaint via our online form but this will not be processed until we reopen.

Ombudsman findings, themes and trends – April 2025

This month we published decision reports from 23 complaints investigated by the Ombudsman. 14 of these were about health services, four about health and social care, four about local government and one about a housing association. The outcome of these 23 complaints were

  • Fully upheld: 16
  • Some upheld: 6
  • Not upheld: 1

We made 81 recommendations to public bodies.

Our published decision reports can be read on our website.

Investigation report 202309999

This month, we published one investigation report about the health sector. In this case, we made a significant finding and laid a detailed report before Parliament.

We publish our reports so that others can learn from the findings to prevent similar outcomes in the future.

We found that the Scottish Ambulance Service did not respond reasonably to the complainant’s 999 calls requesting an ambulance. An ambulance was dispatched in response to the third call, but the patient sadly died before it arrived.

We considered that the ambulance service missed an opportunity to identify a key symptom in one call and incorrectly categorised another.  

We made four recommendations. We asked the service to apologise to the patient’s family and ensure staff are provided with the relevant training.  

Read report 202309999

Our published investigation reports can be read on our website.
 

Updated: April 30, 2025