Paula Sussex, fly swatter or lion hunter?

International Ombuds and academics regularly spend time pontificating on the role of the Ombudsman. With limited resources and increasing demands, should the Ombudsman spend more time hunting lions than swatting flies? This analogy is aptly described in a presentation entitled Lion Hunter delivered by Alan Cameron, Commonwealth Ombudsman, in Canberra, on 26 September 1991.

My immediate predecessor was fond of quoting an American commentator to the effect that while the office of an ombudsman was not very well equipped for hunting lions … it can certainly swat a lot of flies. A well disrespectful commuter to this national capital may be forgiven for observing that, when summer finally arrives, someone will have to swat the flies, so it may just as well be the Ombudsman. However, I think the time may have come to change the emphasis within my office, so that we have set out to hunt more lions, on the basis that thereby, that which attracted the flies in the first place will be reduced and the flies will tend to go away of their own accord. (p1)

The ‘flies’ are the everyday complaints supplied by the public who seek redress and compensation. While the lions are the systemic reports highlighting overarching failures of public bodies to deliver an acceptable service. The thought being that by identifying and thereby correcting such failures, the number of complaints (flies) would automatically decline.

On page 2, Cameron expands on his mission to hunt more lions with the following statement.

But what concerns me is that unless we do occasionally seize upon major issues, we will miss out on our work having any exemplar effect. Unless there is the occasional cause celebre, the incident which brings the Ombudsman to bureaucratic and public attention quite forcibly, the office runs the risk of being thought to be trivial, and perhaps being trivial, because it deals only with matters identified by others as trivial, even if highly important to those directly concerned.

Is our very own Ombudsman, Paula Sussex, now hoping to gain an ‘exemplar effect’ by focusing on the systemic issues, to the obvious detriment of individual case investigations? My colleague, David Czarnetzki, wonders whether some kind of power grab is currently in motion.

Has Paula Sussex made a pre-emptive power grab for the job of Housing and Local Government Ombuds?

by David Czarnetzki

On 1^st October 2026, the name of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman changed to become the Public Service Ombudsman. I expressed my concerns in a letter to Doug Chalmers, CB DSO OBE, Chair of the Ethics and Integrity Commission, who is currently engaged in a review of the public Ombudsman sector. I am grateful to the Commission for having no objection to the correspondence between us being made public and I invite readers to draw their own conclusions.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5^th October 2026

Dear Mr Chalmers,

Public Service Ombudsman

On 3^rd March 2026, the Commission launched its review of the Public Service Ombudsman landscape. The review incorporates the roles of the:

• Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)
• Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO)
• Housing Ombudsman

The Commission’s minutes of the 16^th July, published on 30^th September, at item 9, indicate a ‘workstream discussion’ regarding the review and underlined progression on oral evidence. The discussion itself is not disclosed.

Others may well share my concern regarding recent events at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, who appears to have acted independently and, without waiting for the review, renamed the organisation as the Public Service Ombudsman with effect from 1^st October 2026.

This particular role carries the official title of Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration by virtue of the 1967 Act and Health Service Commissioner by virtue of the 1993 Act. Whilst the roles of the LGSCO and Housing Ombudsmen remain, PHSO retains its limited role.

This change is likely to cause increased confusion in the eyes of the public. The new website already indicates waiting times for complainants to be up to eight months for both parliamentary and health complaints. It is highly probable that complaints which should be directed to the other two ombudsman services will be misdirected, thus causing further delay and frustration to the public.

Personally, I find this arbitrary change as lacking ethics or integrity. It also is discourteous to your commission, which has yet to make its report to government. The situation is further exacerbated by:

• The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) also opened an inquiry into PHSO in January 2026 and has yet to report
• In the inquiry into events at the Countess of Chester Hospital (the Thirlwall Inquiry), Lady Justice Thirlwall made 17 recommendations. Number 16 related to PHSO. (note: the former Ombudsman, Sir Rob Behrens supplied this inquiry with a written statement on 13^th March 2024 and gave oral evidence to the inquiry on 10^th December 2024)

May I ask you to provide the view of your commission regarding this change of name and, also, clarify:

• Whether you have now taken all the oral evidence you intend to. The Commission did indicate a deadline of the end of July 2026.
• Will all the written evidence submitted also be published, including that supplied by PHSO The Facts, a support group of which I am a member?
• The Commission’s response to the actions of the current Ombudsman regarding the change of name with regard to the situation it has now created.

Yours sincerely

David Czarnetzki

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Response from the Ethics and Integrity Commission

Dear David,

Thank you for your email and your engagement with the EIC’s Review into Public Sector Ombudsman.

We are still gathering evidence and we plan to publish our review in early 2027.

I can confirm that we do not yet know which evidence we will be publishing. As explained in our Call for Evidence notice, the Commission may choose not to accept a submission as evidence, or not to publish a submission even if it is accepted as evidence. We are therefore reviewing the evidence as we continue to research and draft the review, ahead of our 2027 publication date.

Kind regards,

EIC Officials Team

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A fairly non-descript response from the Ethics and Integrity Commission, but the timing of their review indicates that something is afoot. Recommendation 16 of the Thirwall Inquiry suggests that the Ombudsman should take over the role of the National Guardian’s Office and be able to investigate the concerns of whistleblowers.

By expanding the name, are they laying the ground for an expanded role for Paula Sussex? In an interview on Radio 4 ‘Yesterday in Parliament’ (starting at 16:10) broadcast on 19 October, Paula Sussex was able to discuss the role of the Public Service Ombudsman and the reason for the name change. She also laid out her intention to carry out more systemic investigations.

20:14 Paula Sussex: “We want to be able to focus more on systemic investigations, so the work that we have been producing this year shows that we are going to the root cause of things that are going wrong in public service. It’s always going to be incredibly important that we deal with individual redress and we are dealing with probably something like 20% more investigations than we did last year, but at the same time we need, in both the health service and government, to look at what the systemic or the structural issues that are going wrong here and take them into parliament and to the media to say these are the things that our complainants are shining a light on that can be fixed.”

The big question is, do any of these systemic reports actually result in dead lions? Or is Ms Sussex merely lion-spotting and hoping the government will pull the trigger? Sadly, too often Ministers have not taken swift action or any action at all. Three new reports can be seen on the publication page of the Public Service Ombudsman website since the arrival of Ms Sussex. Two regarding poor communication and one on improving access to services for those needing support for ADHD and Autism. What happens to these systemic reports and do we need more of them?

At 20:56 the interviewer, Sean Curran, asks: “You identify problems, you identify the cause of the problems, do you actually change things?”

Deep intake of breath on the part of Paula Sussex, as if trying to suppress a laugh, then “We’re working very hard to change things; we’re delighted in, even in this year, our health reports our recommendations have been accepted, so on ADHD we’ve identified that there’s a regulatory gap, that needs to be closed. Delighted to say the Department for Health and Social Care has accepted it; the Care Quality Commission is looking at implementing it. Following through on our, particularly, our major recommendations, is going to be a particular focus of mine.”

So that’s fine then.

Back to David Czarnetzki for the final word:

It strikes me as very odd that this organisation is allowed to make such an arbitrary change without reference to parliament. In the interview, Paula advocates the name change will remove confusion. As I averred in my letter to the EIC, she is likely to be fielding enquiries that should, at this time, properly go elsewhere. Where is the scrutiny?

Where indeed.