Statement of Reasons Manual
6. Decision standards
There are seven specific decision standards.
| Principle | Standard | Measure |
|---|---|---|
| Satisfying complainants | Complaint heard and understood |
Complaint stated succinctly States what has been investigated and explains any difference from the original complaint |
| Accurate |
All facts are accurate No typos in the summary |
|
| Legally sound | Easy to defend in court |
Reasoning clear, sound and logical Relevant law and guidance applied correctly Decision statement states all the essential points including the test for whether the BinJ's actions were wrong |
| Confidentiality | No names. No details identifying people, unless needed to explain the decision | |
| Clear | Structure |
Decison statement follows the standard structure Any events listed are in date order, unless another way is clearer |
| Easy to read | Written in Plain English. Avoids jargon | |
| Focussed | Include only the material information needed to explain the decision. No extraneous detail. |
Typing and grammatical mistakes should be kept to a minimum. There is no set criteria as to why a statement may fail the standard because of typing errors. For example a ten page decision statement may have four typing errors in and still be considered acceptable, but another ten page decision statement may only have one typing error, but because of its significance, this may be seen as not meeting the standard.
Stylewriter
Stylewriter is a tool to support investigators when writing decision statements. It gives suggestions where to improve, but as with any tool, you should think about whether to accept the suggestions it makes. While there are target scores to achieve, there will be occasions where achieving these is impossible, for example because of the subject matter of the complaint, such as planning.
The Stylewriter target scores are:
- Style 40
- Sentence length 20
- Passive verbs 20