Service Complaint
Thanks Easy, I used to 'think' as you do until I saw it differently myself as a CO, as a Respondent and as a Complainant, and having worked with the Ombudsman and the MoD (at Board and Ministerial level). Moreover, were one to take a moment to look at the Defence Select Committee Inquiry Report last month into the work of the Service Complaint Ombudsman, which is available on line under the HCSC website, the reality is there for all to see. In this particular case the man was actively discouraged from making Complaint moreover he, nor we, have any confidence whatsoever in anything coming from it either were he to now have a stab (pun intended).
You may not know, for example, that one has to queue for some 18 months to even get to the Ombudsman, after one has exhausted the internal process, and even after her investigation, were she to even commission one (it is not a right of passage), her decisions are binding but her recommendations are not. Her recommendations can be dismissed with ease by the Single Service, under a policy crafted by the Single Service. The whole system in the way it is exercised is not FFP, as the HCSC themselves record. Lessons are not learnt as lessons are not perhaps identified given the investigative failures within Defence.
The point of the Sqn Association, and the purpose of this thread, is that many Assoc members are often life members......and what is missing in this space currently is a matter of Independent representation of the Service Person. In this case there is no Sqn Association as we now know, so we are pursuing other leads - but not that of Complaint! We wouldn't expect aircrew to get into a jet knowing it to be broken.....
I only wish it were how you state it to be....one day we hope it will be!