Decision report 201100887

Summary
Mr C complained about the procedures adopted by Scottish Enterprise to investigate his complaints about what happened when, some time ago, a Scottish Enterprise regional office was involved with Mr C and his companies in an advisory capacity. He made serious allegations of conflict of interest against former employees of the regional office. Because of the nature of the allegations, a senior officer was appointed to investigate. The officer met with Mr C at the start of the investigation.

Over a year later, Mr C was provided with a copy of the investigator's report. Mr C complained that the written statement to the investigating officer was not reasonably considered during the investigation, that the final report did not acknowledge his views, and that the time taken to investigate and to provide a final response was unreasonable. We did not uphold Mr C's first complaint as we found no evidence that his statement was not reasonably considered. We upheld the other complaints, however, as we found that Mr C was not given the opportunity to comment on issues of fact before the end of the investigation, and that the length of time taken was unreasonable.

Recommendation
We recommended that Scottish Enterprise:
• seek to agree with Mr C a set of points he believes to be outstanding and to answer those points within a timescale of three months