SPSO Individual Decisions

We investigated a complaint about the audit of a further education college and an associated report. We found that there had been a change in the scope of the audit on the basis of legal advice but that a record of this advice had not been maintained. We also found that after the scope of the audit changed, a person who was previously advised they would be interviewed was not advised that this would no longer go ahead. Consequently, they were unaware of the progress of the audit until they were sent a copy of the report the day before publication. Audit Scotland acknowledged the issues with communication and there being no record of the legal advice during their own consideration of the case. Audit Scotland concluded that the person should have been informed at an earlier stage as this would have allowed them the opportunity to submit evidence for consideration. Audit Scotland also advised that as a result of their review of this case, they were considering their approach in engaging with people who have a clear interest in their work but are no longer employed by the organisation being audited. Our investigation highlighted some issues with complaints handling and found that in relation to one point, information Audit Scotland provided was misleading. We did not identify any other failings in Audit Scotland's approach in this case. We made a number of recommendations to address the issues highlighted.

Mr C complained that Audit Scotland failed to respond to an email asking whether they were able to investigate a complaint about a third party organisation. As no response was received to this email Mr C sought a response from Audit Scotland and, following investigation, they responded to him almost ten months later. Mr C complained that Audit Scotland unreasonably delayed responding to his earlier email, that they unreasonably shared details of his complaint with the third party organisation and that the quality of the investigation of his complaint was poor. Audit Scotland acknowledged, and apologised to Mr C for the delay in responding to, his complaint. They upheld this element of his complaint. They did not uphold the elements relating to a potential breach of his confidentiality and failures in their investigation of his complaint. As Mr C remained unhappy, he complained to us. We noted the steps taken by Audit Scotland prior to Mr C coming to us. We also noted that Mr C had not given his permission for them to pass his details to the third party organisation, nor had they demonstrated that Mr C had made his complaint known to the third party organisation himself. As this was, in our view, a breach of their own procedures, we upheld his complaint.

Mrs C lives in an area served by a passenger ferry service. Mrs C and a number of other users were concerned about the re-tendering exercise for this service. This was carried out by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) who were responsible for subsidising the service. Mrs C complained that SPT failed to provide adequate specification in the tender documents that the vessel to be deployed should be of modern public transport quality, and awarded the contract to the successful bidder primarily with regard to savings in costs and not on passenger safety and comfort. She also said that SPT had not fully responded to questions that she and others raised. We did not uphold Mrs C's complaints. Our investigation found that the tender documents had specified a size and class of vessel, and required that the vessel deployed should be licensed by the Marine and Coastguard Agency (MCA) for safety and seaworthiness purposes. The successful bidder was not required to supply a new or modern vessel. The incumbent operators, who had been using a vessel built in 2007, were unsuccessful in their bid by a substantial margin. We also noted that the award of the contract had been examined separately by Audit Scotland, who had made no criticism of SPT's procurement process. In response to considerable public interest in the tendering process, SPT had published a question and answer sheet, and had updated this when further questions arose. On balance, we did not uphold this complaint as we found that only two of the six specific questions raised by Mrs C in her correspondence had not received an answer. This was because one was treated as a comment because of the way Mrs C had written it, and the other was a matter for the MCA rather than SPT. Related reading View Decision Report 201202237 as a PDF (11.54 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018

Mr C, a landlord holding a Housing in Multiple Ownership (HMO) licence, was aggrieved at the high level of licence fees imposed by a local authority which had allowed a considerable surplus to be built up and which had not been 'ring-fenced' for the purpose of HMO licensing. He also complained about the actions of the local authority but we did not pursue that complaint. The council had introduced a system of banded fees from late September 2010. Mr C considered that Audit Scotland and the authority's external auditors should have picked up on the surplus accruing from 2008 and required the local authority to reimburse landlords who had paid exorbitant fees in earlier years. Our investigation found no evidence of maladministration and we did not uphold the complaints. Related reading View Decision Report 201004681 as a PDF (13.77 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018