Today, Tuesday 1 April 2025, the Scottish Parliament agreed the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body’s (SPBC) recommendation, that Paul McFadden be appointed Scotland’s fourth Public Services Ombudsman. 

Rosemary Agnew, the current Ombudsman’s, eight-year term ends on 30 April 2025. In the interim until Paul takes up office, Andrew Crawford, a member of the SPSO Senior Leadership Team, will be appointed as the Interim Ombudsman from 1 May 2025. 

Rosemary Agnew said; 

“Congratulations to Paul McFadden. I welcome the announcement and the interim arrangements, as this will ensure there is no break or dip in service for our service users - complainants, whistleblowers, applicants to the Scottish Welfare Fund, and public bodies.”

A word from the Ombudsman, Michelle Morris 

Welcome to the 6th edition of our newsletter. 

We have now completed the second year of our Strategic Plan 2023-26 ‘A New Chapter’. Many actions set out under the Plan have now been delivered and we will continue to work towards our ambitious goals during 2025/26. 

We remain focused on rebuilding the reputation of the office, following the social media incident last year which called our impartiality into question. While an independent review of our investigation of Code of Conduct Complaints found that our decision making was appropriate, fair and free from political bias, it also made recommendations to improve the current safeguards for ensuring fairness and impartiality.   

Over the recent months, our focus has also been on the Finance Committee’s post-legislative review of the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019. The Act requires the Senedd to undertake a post-legislative review as soon as practicable after 21 May 2024 (that is, five years since the 2019 Act received Royal Assent). We have been busy assembling evidence on the impact of our proactive powers to accept complaints other than in writing; undertake investigations on own initiative; and set complaints standards. We have also been invited to speak to the Committee on 30 April. 

In the meantime, we again bring you a quick and easy-to-digest summary of our complaints and improvement work. We are not including in this edition of the newsletter our year-end complaints statistics, as the full details will be available in our Annual Report & Accounts for 2024/25. However, we provide summaries of our recent public interest reports and our Code of Conduct referrals, as well as details of our two recent thematic reports and our complaints standards work. 

It has been a busy year! Despite the challenges, we have a lot to be proud of. We are looking forward to sharing more evidence of our impact in our submission to the Senedd’s Finance Committee as well as discussing all areas of our performance in our next Annual Report.  

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Ombudsman Ger Deering recently spoke to Donie Tarrant, host of Near FM's Northside Today, about the role of the Ombudsman and some of the issues facing North Dublin residents.

El Defensor del Pueblo, Ángel Gabilondo, ha mantenido este miércoles un encuentro de carácter institucional con el Síndic de Greuges de la Comunitat Valenciana, Ángel Luna. Ambos han instado a las administraciones estatal y autonómica a que colaboren y trabajen de manera coordinada para superar los estragos causados por la DANA del pasado 29 de octubre.

Tras analizar la respuesta que han dado las diferentes administraciones a la catástrofe, Gabilondo y Luna ha acordado compartir y coordinar las actuaciones de supervisión para velar por la defensa y garantía de los derechos de la ciudadanía afectada.

Durante el encuentro, celebrado en la Sindicatura de Greuges en Alicante, Ángel Gabilondo ha destacado la colaboración y coordinación que mantienen las dos instituciones y ha apelado a las administraciones estatal y autonómica, a que trabajen también coordinadamente “en toda su dimensión”. “En el Estado de las Autonomías es muy importante que la Administración General del Estado, el Gobierno de España, y la CCAA, la Generalitat Valenciana, impulsen todos los mecanismos de coordinación y cooperación que son necesarios y que ello sea percibido por la sociedad”, ha afirmado.

Asimismo, ha apuntado que “nuestra supervisión de la recuperación empieza en primer lugar por decir que hay que impulsar todos los mecanismos y todos los procesos señalados por la ley”. Por ello, ha anunciado que la institución que preside va a iniciar una actuación de oficio “para preguntar a las administraciones estatal y autonómica si hay alguna iniciativa en torno a la creación de una comisión de coordinación, tal y como establece la normativa aprobada al respecto”.