New Petitions

Agenda item 2 is consideration of new petitions. As members will recall, the committee agreed at last week’s meeting to defer consideration of six new petitions to today’s meeting.

The first new petition is PE1659 by Bill Tait, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to create an independent body with a remit to make findings of fact in complaints involving local authorities. Members have a copy of the petition and a Scottish Parliament information centre briefing.

The background information to the petition outlines concerns relating to the manner in which different councils handle similar issues, and the petitioner suggests that that might result in a

“lack of equity in the treatment of the Scottish people.”

The petition also comments that the current routes to making council complaints do not have

“the teeth to set in motion action to bring parity and justice”

to council complaints across Scotland.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

The petition raises an interesting argument about putting in place this kind of independent body versus having democratic accountability at a local level, which, inevitably, will mean that different places are different. There is also the fact that people’s degree of satisfaction with a decision sometimes depends on the extent to which the decision was the one that they wanted. We are all like that—it is entirely natural—but I suppose that it would be interesting to identify the fundamental principles with regard to fairness in the treatment of complaints.

The ombudsman process can often be frustrating for people, because it looks only at the handling of the complaint rather than at the fundamental underlying issues.

I think that it has been suggested that we write to the Scottish Government. I believe that you mentioned other stakeholders, Rona. Whom would you suggest?

It would be useful to get the views of local government officials who manage the process and hear how they deal with complaints, but I do not know what the appropriate representative body would be. Obviously, there is COSLA, but I am just thinking about officials. It would not be the education body, but you know what I mean—it would be the body that represents not quite the chief executives but the folk who have to deal with complaints.

Indeed. I think that the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers is the body for the chief executives. It would be interesting to hear from it, given that its members have to manage complaints and the administrative process.

There are issues here that we can take forward and the committee clearly regards the petition as an interesting area to explore. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.