Armed Forces: Complaints

(asked on 25th June 2018) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many complaints were made to the Service Complaints Ombudsman in the last 12 months for which data are available; and how many complaints otherwise made were resolved to the satisfaction of the complainant without recourse to the Ombudsman's office.


Answered by
Tobias Ellwood Portrait
Tobias Ellwood
This question was answered on 2nd July 2018

The most recent information about the number of Service Complaints dealt with by the Services, and the number of investigations carried out by the Service Complaints Ombudsman (SCO), is included in the 2017 Annual Report of the SCO.

The latest Annual Report - and those for previous years - can be accessed on the SCO's website at the following link:

https://www.servicecomplaintsombudsman.org.uk/service-complaints-ombudsman/publications-and-reports/annual-reports/

The Annual Report for 2017 shows that the Services received 1,009 Service Complaints. It is not possible to determine how many of these specific complaints were not resolved to the satisfaction of the complainant and subsequently referred to the SCO; indeed, some referrals may not have been made until this year. Therefore, the figure of 406 complaint investigations carried out by the SCO which appears in the 2017 Annual Report does not relate directly to those 1,009 complaints received by the Services in the same year. The data would, however, appear to indicate that a significant proportion of Service Complaints are resolved without recourse to the SCO.

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