New Customer Service Standards

We have updated our Customer Service Standards and are looking for feedback from customers. Please fill out our survey here by 12 May 2025: https://forms.office.com/e/ZDpjibqe8r 

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