Social Security Scotland Feedback: Complaint Outcomes

Complaints fall under the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) and their complaints handling procedure. This sets out a 2 stage internal complaints process. Frontline resolution - stage 1, allows 5 working days to respond to the client's complaint. Where a client remains unhappy with this response they can proceed to investigation - stage 2, which allows 20 working days to investigate and provide a response. If the client still remains unhappy then they can choose to take their complaint to the SPSO.

Possible outcomes for complaints are:

-Upheld - the client's complaint has been upheld, as it meets the terms in the definition of a complaint.

-Not upheld - the client's complaint was not upheld because it did not meet the terms in the definition of a complaint.

-Partially upheld - if the client makes a complaint raising more than one issue, one part (or parts) of the complaint may meet the terms in the definition of a complaint, and other(s) do not. In this case the complaint would be partially upheld.

-Resolved - if a client has made a complaint and their complaint is resolved without the need to look further into why something went wrong or to mark it as upheld or not upheld. This outcome was introduced on 12 April 2021.

Outcomes for Stage 1 and Stage 2 are counted separately, therefore the number of outcomes exceeds the number of complaints received. Some complaints will also be outstanding at the end of the reporting period, and will therefore not be counted in the outcome statistics. Withdrawn complaints are counted within the outcome statistics.

Not assessed

-Comparisons with DWP complaints statistics

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has a different complaints process to Social Security Scotland, and as such, DWP complaints statistics are not directly comparable to these statistics. Further information about complaints at DWP and links to their latest statistics are available on the DWP website.

Datasets will be updated on statistics.gov.scot within one month of the date of the publication.

The publications are available on the Scottish Government website.

Not assessed

Rounding and disclosure control.

Feedback numbers have been rounded to the nearest five for disclosure control. Figures may not sum due to rounding.

Comparison to clerical data.

Data from the case management system has been compared to clerical records. Discrepancies have been investigated with the Client Experience team, and errors in case management system data have been manually fixed to match the clerical record where necessary. Discrepancies included:

-A small number of items of feedback received had a date before September 2018, or had the date of feedback being recorded rather than date received. There were also errors in date feedback was received and decisions were made on the case management system due to migration of feedback information onto the case management system during the first months following the launch of Carer's Allowance Supplement. Dates have been amended back to the original dates received and decided with reference to the clerical records.

-Some feedback had discrepancies in channel, reason or outcome between the case management system and clerical records. Each of these cases have been investigated with the Client Experience team and corrected.

-Some feedback on the case management system is recorded as being not benefit specific. While this is true in some cases, in others this occurs where benefit information is missing. Missing benefit information has been completed with reference to clerical records.

-In a small number of cases the Stage 1 and Stage 2 of one complaint have been recorded as two separate complaints on the case management system. These have been merged back into one complaint where necessary.

-The case management system includes a number of complaints where the outcome is recorded as 'Deleted'. In some cases these are complaints that have been created in error, and these have been removed from the dataset used to produce the figures in this publication. In others cases the outcome of the complaint has been amended from 'Deleted' to the correct outcome of the complaint.

-For the 2022/23 financial year, records that were missing from either the case management system or clerical records were investigated with the Client Experience Team. A small number of duplicate cases were also identified and checked with the Client Experience Team.

The data used to produce the figures has been checked on a case by case basis with clerical records used for internal reporting within Social Security Scotland, and discrepancies investigated.

Additional quality assurance and cleaning has been carried out on specific variables:

-The dataset has been checked for duplicate records based on Case ID number.

-Variables have been checked for missing information.

-Feedback received dates and decisions dates have been checked to see whether they fall within expected ranges (e.g. after September 2018) and are consistent with those produced by clerical records.

-Feedback channels, reasons, benefits and outcomes have been checked for consistency with those produced by clerical records.

-For complaints, the benefit that a complaint refers to and reason for the complaint have been checked for consistency between Stage 1 and Stage 2.

Once the data is aggregated and copied into the publication and supporting Excel tables, the final statistics are quality assured by a different member of the statistics team. The final documents are checked by the lead statistician.

Revisions and corrections to previously published statistics are dealt with in accordance with the Scottish Government Statistician Group corporate policy statement on revisions and corrections - a copy of which is available on the Scottish Government website.

This data contains no sensitive, personal information.