PHSO IS THE SUBJECT OF THEIR LATEST PAGE 94 PODCAST
By David Czarnetzki 29th September 2025
Periodically throughout 2025, Private Eye magazine has been publishing a series of articles exposing the failures at PHSO. They have tackled many aspects of both the parliamentary and health service aspects of PHSO work, including the issues, published below:
1642 Complaint upholds – PHSO says no
1649 The shambolic recruitment process to appoint an Ombudsman
1652 Failures in the case of Marion Johnson
1653 PHSO and the 10 Year Health Plan
1654 PHSO and end-of-life care complaints
1657 PHSO attitude to mental health issues
1658 The case of Richard Allen and how his business was disadvantaged by HMRC and Low Value Consignment VAT Relief
Justine Smith, a Private Eye journalist, has been investigating this quango that continues to fail the vast majority of complainants. Readers may be interested to know that Page 94 of Private Eye is actually their podcast. The latest one features Justine with Eye stalwart Ian Hislop and others discussing the PHSO operation and uses the harrowing case of Naomi to illustrate the failures so many have experienced. The podcast is reproduced here with kind permission of Private Eye. It is well worth listening to it. Justine indicates that there is more to be revealed.
Well done, Justine and Private Eye. Please keep exposing this awful organisation sitting at the top of the complaint process. Sooner or later, Government will have to listen.
phsothetruestory 
Hello Della and David
As someone that has personal experience of a corrupt PHSO NHS investigation, I would like to thank you and the other folks involved in PHSOTHETRUESTORY for leading the campaign for justice. Your website correctly predicted my experience of a PHSO investigation and review:
1. Multiple refusals to consider/acknowledge evidence of wrongdoing. Simply ignoring repeated requests to consider the evidence.
2. Accepting clinical advice that does not comply with the PHSO’s quality standards and ignoring requests to have poor clinical advice quality checked.
3. Review carried out by a PHSO “Senior Caseworker – Ombudsman Assurance Team”. Instead of upholding PHSO policies and quality standards, this member of staff was comfortable with ignoring those policies/standards and chased an NHS Clinical Adviser to change clinical advice to support the PHSO’s required view. When the NHS Clinical Adviser refused, the Senior Caseworker based his review decision on his own “clinical advice” that the NHS Clinical Adviser refused to support.
4. The PHSO refused to answer questions about its conduct on the grounds that it would waste public money.
5. Concerns about the conduct of the PHSO Senior Caseworker brought to the attention of the PHSO’s Director of Operations, Legal and Quality and Paula Sussex (the new Ombudsman). After weeks of waiting, no response to date from either person. This is evidence of institutional support for the PHSO failing to apply its own policies and quality standards.
I would be interested to get involved in a campaign to seek justice for all those that have suffered injustice at the hands of the PHSO. Does PHSOTHETRUESTORY have specific aims and a plan to get there? Perhaps the Post Office Horizon scandal offers a model that could be followed?
Do you recommend me passing on my experiences to Private Eye? Is Private Eye’s interest limited to just running PHSO stories or is it pressing for specific reforms?
Has any thought been given to taking concerns about the PHSO to other media like the TV and newspapers?
Sorry to ask to many questions – I would just like to see justice for all those that have suffered from the PHSO’s maladministration.
PS
My reading of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill is that the PHSO will not be included in the list of public bodies to which a duty of candour will apply. I have emailed the Government’s Ministry of Justice to query this omission.
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Well no.3 of your list is remarkable. PHSO corruption excelling themselves. Please join our support group for answers to your questions. Email phso-thefacts@outlook.com
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Hello Esmond. We should compare notes. I’ve tagged you in a recent X post.
Good work on the new duty of candour. I’ve already reported one PHSO lawyer for breaching the duty of candour in Judicial Review Protocol correspondence.
I too have written to Paula Sussex, without getting any reply or even an acknowledgment.
I have not minced my words – I believe the PHSO institutionally corrupt.
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Hello Mark
Thanks for your comments.
Happy to chat about my experiences if that would help.
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The access to continuing healthcare should be available for everyone given a terminal illness diagnosis from the start
No one should have to fight for the funding when they have a primary health need.
Just imagine how many people have been forced to sell property to pay for care they shouldn’t have been paying.
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This chat is not factual reporting. There are reasons why Phso tell people to take legal action. it is not a case of Phso pushing people away but the Law which gives it the powers to act says if a person has or had the opportunity to take legal action then the Phso have to consider this in it’s consideration.
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Yes the law does give PHSO the power to advise people to take legal action and therefore dismiss their complaint. But how many people can take on the NHS with their publicly funded legal teams and win? It is a route to financial disaster for the vast majority of those who are so desperate for the truth they take the legal route. The PHSO is corrupt by design.
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Dismissed as ‘ complainants’, many of us have submitted very serious and carefully documented reports, exposing NHS and PHSO failings. Add another public authority , few if any law firms will accept such cases *- The work of David, Della and Justine is vital
PHSO – Protectors of all NHS staff ‘ working outside their NHS employment’ – including supplying patient data to GMP, when none of the criteria justifying direct police access applied. NHS claimed, for many months, that thee had been no contact with the police – until I submitted my FOI request – which led to the PHSO’s ‘ working outside NHS employment’ eemption from all investigation.
The Patients’ association I recommended that I should request the PHSO -nternal files for my complaint. That question was asked immediately by the PHSO – Hospital response affirmative, case dismissed immediately. ‘ By law’, we can’t investigate this.
Nobody has ever explained how a doctor who had started a training post at the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital four months earlier came to be working for GMP., providing patient data.
GMP Detective Inspector and Sergeant, CID, making a home visit – ( I live in LA8 )- dismissed all the NHS records as irrelevant.
Police response to reported crime, involving abuses of vulnerable adults, blind, deaf and suffering from dementia, upheld by Kate Green, Andy Burnham’s deputy.
My mother, retired Manchester headteacher, 40 year teaching in the city, also suffering from dementia had her entire history ‘ misrepresented’ by a third party Misrepresentation also involved concurrent registration at two GP practices.Misrepresentation affected medication, including drugs whuich would slow down heart. . Two heart valves damaged in childhood ( rheumatic fever) Existing cardiac and mental health patient, denied all medical care for 15 months . PHSO – Outcome for your mother would have been the same. – a typical summary sent to other complainants. ,
GMP -context, their access to NHS opthalmology records, evidently not understood- , dismissed my complaints as ‘ vexatious’, then via Kate Green’s office, GMP added ‘ fractious.’
* One firm – Irwin Mitchell, explained that they couldn’t advise any client to pursue a case Another asked, as a warning – How much is your house worth ?
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