TIO Annual Report 2002/03

Summary Of Complaint Handling Performance - Complaint Outcomes

When an investigation of a Level 2 or above complaint is complete, TIO staff record an ‘outcome’ and an ‘outcome indicator’ for each case. They judge whether, from their understanding of the complainant's point of view, an outcome would be considered to be partially or substantially in favour of the member or the complainant, or whether the outcome would be considered neutral.

Once again this year there was a high percentage of cases, 21.0%, where a neutral outcome was recorded, similar to the figure reported in 2001/02 of 19.5%. The neutral outcome indicator is used when investigative staff consider that the outcome is not necessarily in favour of either party, or where the complainant has not made their anticipated outcome clear and does not recontact the TIO after a proposed resolution letter is sent out. A large component of the neutral category can also be attributed to an administrative practice where, while each complaint can have several ‘issues” logged, only the primary issue remains active when a case is upgraded and staff ‘close off’ subsequent issues as having a neutral outcome.

54.9% of complaints were resolved either substantially of partially in favour of the complainant. This represents a slight decrease from previous years - 57.2% in 2001/02 and 56.9% in 2000/01. 24.1% of complaints were resolved either substantially or partially in favour of the member, reflecting an increase over previous years - 18.9% in 2000/01 and 20.2 % in 2001/02.

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