A word from the Ombudsman

Welcome to the 9th edition of our newsletter, and happy New Year!

2026 is a special year for the office, marking the 20th anniversary of the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. It’s a milestone that gives us the chance to reflect on two decades of supporting fairness, learning from complaints, and promoting trust in public services across Wales.

We ended 2025 with a busy period of public interest reports, particularly focusing on housing and healthcare issues, including four reports on social housing matters. In November, we launched a consultation into a proposed  own initiative investigation on social housing disrepair, damp, and mould, which closed at the start of December.

We also saw the publication of key Senedd reports on our work – our annual scrutiny report and the review of the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act 2019 – and we will highlight the main points from these in this edition.

As always, we will provide updates on Code of Conduct referrals, our complaints standards work, and our outreach activities. We hope this edition gives you a clear picture of the impact of our work and the progress we are making to improve public services across Wales. Here’s to 2026!

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