Decision Report 201300023

Summary

Mr C, who is a prisoner, had appeared before the Parole Board for Scotland, but they did not direct that Mr C should be released. He complained to them that they had not made their decision in line with the relevant rules, as it was based solely on risk assessment reports. The Parole Board advised that they had taken a wide range of information into account in reaching the decision, and gave examples of this.

Mr C was dissatisfied and raised his complaints with us. After investigating the matter, we decided that the Parole Board had reasonably followed the rules, and did not uphold Mr C's complaint about this. We did, however, uphold his complaint about how they had handled his complaint to them, as they had not included a reasonable level of detail in order to provide a clear explanation of their decision.

Recommendations

We recommended that the Parole Board:

• apologise to Mr C for not responding reasonably to his complaint; and
• review their complaints handling guidelines to ensure that complaint responses include a level of detail to ensure reasonably clear explanations of their decisions are provided.