Reform of the system which enables people to complain about the service they receive from their local authorities and other public bodies is overdue, if the tone of a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report is anything to go by. 

‘If government took the power of complaints and redress to improve public services seriously,' the NAO said, ‘it would recognise that the present landscape is incoherent and dissatisfying to users and would show urgency in reforming and rationalising the system.'