Complaints

On this page we provide advice on making a complaint on the public appointments process.

You can make a complaint about any aspect of a ministerial public appointment. This covers new appointments, extensions to existing appointments and re-appointments.

 1. Background

The Scottish Ministers are committed to making fair, open and merit-based appointment decisions to non-executive positions on the boards of Scotland’s public bodies. This is secured by actions and decisions taken by:

• The Scottish Ministers;
• Civil servants who implement the public appointments process on the Scottish Ministers behalf; and
• Members of the public bodies’ selection panels who select and recommend to the Scottish Ministers who should be appointed to the boards of Scotland’s regulated public bodies.

2. Who to complain to

All complaints should be sent to the Appointments Manager at Scottish Government, Human Resources Public Appointments Centre of Expertise (HR-PACE), E1, Saughton House, Edinburgh, EH11 3XD; free-phone 0800 015 8449 or email publicappointmentcomplaints@scotland.gsi.gov.uk The Human Resources Public Appointments Centre of Expertise will co-ordinate a response to your complaint and assign a senior civil servant who will be responsible for considering your complaint.

3. What we do when we receive a complaint

On receipt of your complaint we aim to:

1. Acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and the acknowledgement will include the name and title of the individual within the Scottish Government who will investigate your complaint.
2. Complete our investigation and issue a response to your complaint within 20 working days. If it is not possible for us to do this we will inform you and keep you up-to-date with progress every 10 working days.

4. If you are dissatisfied with the response to your complaint

Who to contact next depends on whether the appointment was made to a regulated public body or not.

1. If the public body is regulated you can ask the Public Appointments Commissioner for Scotland to investigate the matter for you. The Commissioner is independent of the Scottish Government. To find out more about the work of the Commissioner please visit www.publicappointments.org. You can contact the Commissioner at 39 Drumsheugh Gardens, Edinburgh, EH3 7SW; telephone 0131 226 8138 or email appointments@ethicalstandards.org.uk.
2. If the public body is not regulated you can ask the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman to consider your complaint. The Ombudsman is independent of the Scottish Government. To find out more about the Ombudsman’s work please visit www.spso.org.uk. You can contact the SPSO at 4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7NS; telephone 0800 377 7330 or email ask@spso.org.uk

For any questions on Complaints Handling, please contact the Public Appointments Centre of Expertise on  0800 015 8449 or by email at publicappointmentcomplaints@scotland.gsi.gov.uk