Since my role became that of an Ombudsman on 1st January 2016, my office has received many enquiries from Service personnel who want their Service complaint to be investigated by me instead of their chain of command. There seems to be confusion as to why I can’t do this, so I thought I would use my blog post for February to try and clear this up.
A Service complaint is an internal workplace grievance for members of the Armed Forces who feel they have been wronged in a matter relating to their Service life. This is why a complaint is made to the Commanding Officer (CO) in the first instance or a more senior Officer if the CO is implicated in the complaint.
Because it is an internal grievance, it is important that the chain of command be given the opportunity to determine if the wrong occurred and if it did, to make things right. In that respect it is no different to a complaint that a civilian would make to their line manager, or a senior manager, if they felt they had been wronged at work.
However, unlike a civilian, Service life covers significantly more than the day to day job . Service personnel do not have contracts of employment and have limited rights to bring claims against their employer in a court or tribunal. As a result, the Service complaints system is exceptionally important in addressing the concerns Service personnel have about their Service life.
I understand that there is a low level of confidence in how the system works. I also understand that this is usually the reason Service personnel ask me to investigate their complaints from the outset. However, this lack of confidence stems from the way complaints may have been handled in the past, the time it took to resolve complaints and the lack of power the Service Complaints Commissioner had to do anything when things went wrong. While what has happened in the past can’t be ignored, the system has now changed as a direct result of these issues: the system has been streamlined to try and reduce delay; there has been increased training to improve how complaints are handled; and the Commissioner has been replaced with an Ombudsman who has real power to do something when things go wrong.
Although I don’t have the power to investigate complaints for Service personnel instead of their chain of command, if someone has made a complaint and believes that it is being unnecessarily delayed I can investigate that issue to get it moving again. If the complaint has exhausted the internal system and there are concerns about how it was handled, I can investigate those concerns. I can also investigate the substance of a Service complaint at that stage if the complainant believes the wrong decision was reached. As the decisions I make in all investigations are binding, these powers will help to improve the quality of complaint handling over time.
It will take time for people to be more confident in the system, but I strongly believe that this can happen. My primary aim as Ombudsman is to help establish an effective Service complaints system in which all Service personnel can have confidence.