SPSO Individual Decisions

Miss C was party to legal proceedings. She complained to the Scottish Court Service (SCS) that she had not received within a reasonable timescale a copy of documents relating to the decisions taken at the proceedings. She then submitted a claim for compensation due to the consequences of the documents not being provided within a reasonable timescale. At the conclusion of this correspondence the SCS told her that her complaints had been considered under their complaints procedure. Miss C was dissatisfied with this and complained to us that the response to her complaints had not been reasonable. Our investigation found that it was reasonable that there was some confusion about what Miss C wished the SCS to consider, given the context of her communication with them. However, because their complaints handling guidance highlighted the importance of clarifying matters with the complainant, and because Miss C had eventually made reasonably clear what she wished the SCS to consider, we upheld her complaint.

Mr C was in contact with the sheriff court about divorce proceedings. He complained to us that the court failed to provide him with an adequate service in relation to those proceedings. In particular, Mr C said his written communications were not passed to the sheriff for appropriate consideration prior to reaching a decision on the divorce proceedings. In addition, Mr C complained that the sheriff court failed to investigate his complaint appropriately. Our consideration of Mr C's complaint was restricted to looking at the court's administrative handling of his communications. When our investigation reviewed the evidence, it was clear there were several administrative failings in handling correspondence. These included not passing Mr C's written submissions to the sheriff for consideration; not responding to requests for information; and not advising Mr C of the outcome of his divorce within an appropriate timescale. The sheriff court, and the Scottish Court Service (SCS), acknowledged and accepted the failings identified in Mr C's complaint, and because of this we upheld Mr C's complaint although we did not find it necessary to make any recommendations as they had already taken appropriate action. We did not agree with Mr C that the sheriff court failed to investigative his complaint appropriately. We were satisfied that the issues he raised in his complaint were considered, investigated and responded to appropriately by both the court and the SCS. Related reading View Decision Report 201203023 as a PDF (11.24 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018

Mr C complained that funds received by the Sheriff Court, and ultimately due to him, were not placed in an interest bearing account immediately. He said that this meant he was deprived of interest on the money. When we investigated, we found that the Scottish Court Serice passed the funds to the bank well within the ten days required by law. Any delay after that was not on the part of the SCS and so was not something that we could consider. Although we did not uphold Mr C's complaint about SCS we found that they had not handled it well. We therefore recommended that they apologise to Mr C for this, and take steps to ensure that their staff are aware of the complaints procedure.