Chamber and committees

Thank you very much for that. You mentioned the work that was done prior to the survey going out. I would be interested to hear about the groups that were involved in designing the survey and the project more generally.

I also would like to pick up on the discrepancy in respect of candidates under 34. It is welcome to see intersectional analysis being undertaken on that data, and it is welcome that we will continue to do that to fully understand the complex and multiple barriers to elected office that many people in Scotland face. One insight that I would like to hear more about is the significantly higher proportion of men than women under 34 who stand for election. That shows that the perceived progress in gender representation among younger people is not the case. I am keen to hear whether any further analysis was or can be done to identify causes for that discrepancy, so that the committee can progress work on addressing those barriers.

We will take that into our private session and give it consideration. It is a good question for us to reflect on.

I thank Maria and Arfan for joining us and giving evidence.

As we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the next items in private, we have no more public business. I therefore close the public part of the meeting.

Good morning and welcome to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee’s 31st meeting in 2022. I ask all members and witnesses to put all their devices on silent and to turn off all notifications during the meeting.

Under agenda item 1, do members agree to take items 4 to 8 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

It makes sense that the context resulted in the change.

I will move on to waiting times. When we met in March, you told the committee:

“Too many people are still waiting too long to have their complaints looked at.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 29 March 2022; c 6.]

I would be interested to hear what has changed since March, given that the SPSO website still warns of a nine-month delay. What impact is that delay having on people’s willingness to progress complaints?

Item 2 is to take evidence on the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman’s “Annual Report 2021-22”. We are joined by Rosemary Agnew, who is our ombudsman; Niki Maclean, who is the SPSO’s director; and Andrew Sheridan, who is the SPSO’s head of improvement, standards and engagement. I welcome our witnesses. Before we move to questions from members, I invite Rosemary Agnew to make a short opening statement.

Thank you very much. It was good to hear your opening statement and have you flag up the increasing complexity of legislation and the workloads that I imagine might come out of that.

You closed with the piece about complaints. It is good to hear that you do more than work on complaints, but I would like to focus on complaints. The committee would be interested to hear about the 17 per cent increase in public service complaints that the ombudsman received between 2020-21 and 2021-22, as noted in our papers. You touched on that a little. Will you expand on the reasons for that increase? Have new trends been identified in the recent case figures?

That certainly is good news. I definitely agree that the direction of travel is right. The committee discovered on your website that the waiting time was 10 months last week and that it is nine months this week. As you said, if we were at the end of this week, it would be eight months. We wonder about that. If people see on the website that the waiting time is nine or eight months, could that deter them from complaining? Is there a way to parse that a bit more so that people understand it? Does the website have something that allows people to understand that there is a fast-track process so that, in a good number of cases, the period can be 12 weeks?

Thanks for that. I will now bring in my colleagues.

I am sorry—I think that Willie Coffey has a quick supplementary first.