Statement of Reasons Manual

Appendix Two: Procedure for closing personnel & employment decisions 

Personnel and employment decisions 

Assistant Ombudsman and Assessment Managers have agreed that when Assessment or Investigation close a case because it is a ‘personnel or employment matter’ (in other words Schedule 5.4/Schedule 5A.4) we will follow a different procedure.

What will we do?

  • We will send the decision statement to the complainant only;
  • We will not publish the decision statement;
  • We will tell the complainant we have not published the statement or sent it to the body in jurisdiction;
  • We will not tell the body in jurisdiction the name and address of the complainant, or provide a the copy of the complaint and the decision statement; and
  • We will send the body in jurisdiction a decision letter telling it we have received a complaint about a personnel or employment matter, we are not investigating it and that we do not disclose details of such complaints and we are telling them for statistical purposes. 

It is the closure reason that decides the action we take, not the category or subcategory of the complaint. 

Standard letter templates for this type of decision will be uploaded on to ECHO

Why treat these complaints differently?

We have no control over what may happen to any information we send to a council. If information about the identity of the complainant is shared with a council’s HR Department (bearing in mind that standard practice is for all complaints to be shared with the relevant department) possibly something within it – or the fact of the complaint – might prejudice or cause harm to a complainant’s grievance and prospects with their employer. Also the complainant may not have yet raised the issues with their employer and by sending details of the complaint we may have ‘outed’ them against their wishes.

We do not send decision statements on these complaints to the body in jurisdiction or publish them because there is a significant risk of HR departments identifying the complainant, which would defeat the aim of withholding the person’s name and detail. In addition a meaningful statement, if published, gives clues to the identity of the complainant such that they would be recognisable to work colleagues. When statements are rendered so lacking in detail that the complainant cannot be identified, they become meaningless and unhelpful to the complainant and public.

Exceptions

There are two exceptions to this policy:

  • If the complainant was not and is not a council employee – such as a member of the public complaining about the appointment of a Chief Executive – then there is no danger of compromising the relationship between the complainant and the body in jurisdiction. In those circumstances it may be appropriate to treat this as a normal complaint – publishing the decision statement and telling the body in jurisdiction in the usual way. In such cases the Investigator must set out the reason for deciding to publish the decision in the ‘Details’ section of the Publication screen on ECHO. There is no need to also set out this information in Notes and Analysis.
  • It the complaint is under Part 3A against a care provider, no notification is to be sent to the body in jurisdiction. There is a high likelihood of the complainant being recognisable, and the body in jurisdiction does not need telling about a complaint as it does not have to collect statistics as councils do. Nor do we send annual statistics to care providers individually.
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