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Case ref:201004347
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Date:July 2011
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Body:Scottish Court Service
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Sector:Scottish Government and Devolved Administration
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Outcome:Not upheld, recommendations
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Subject:Delay
Summary
Mr C complained that funds received by the Sheriff Court, and ultimately due to him, were not placed in an interest bearing account immediately. He said that this meant he was deprived of interest on the money. When we investigated, we found that the Scottish Court Serice passed the funds to the bank well within the ten days required by law. Any delay after that was not on the part of the SCS and so was not something that we could consider. Although we did not uphold Mr C's complaint about SCS we found that they had not handled it well. We therefore recommended that they apologise to Mr C for this, and take steps to ensure that their staff are aware of the complaints procedure.
Recommendations
We recommend that Scottish Court Service:
• apologise to Mr C for the way they handled his complaint; and
• take steps to ensure that all staff are fully aware of the SCS complaints procedure, and that staff provide information about escalation to the next step and the Ombudsman appropriately.