Decision Report 201204492

Summary

Ms C complained about the Care Inspectorate's handling of an investigation into a complaint made about her nursery, which had been upheld. In particular, she said that they failed to deal with the investigation within the timescales allowed, failed to deal with the complaint in a reasonable manner and did not conduct the investigation according to their guidelines. She also said that they published their decision on their website following the investigation, although she had submitted a complaint about their handling of the complaint.

During our investigation we found that, in line with their procedures, the Inspectorate had communicated with the parent who had made the complaint about the timescale for completion of the investigation. However, they accepted that they should have told Ms C that the investigation was not going to be completed within the timescales detailed in their procedures and should have apologised for this. We were satisfied that the Inspectorate had considered and responded to Ms C's concerns about how they had dealt with the complaint about her nursery. In addition, we noted that, as a result of Ms C's concerns, they had agreed to reopen the parent's complaint for a further full investigation to allow further information to be sought, and had decided to set aside the regrading that had been applied following the complaint. However, we were concerned that there had been a delay in removing the regrading information from their website.

Recommendations

We recommended that the Care Inspectorate:

• apologise to Ms C for the delay in removing the downgrading from the website.