I wrote to the chief executive of Arts Council of Wales (ACW) on 5 August 2012 to make a formal complaint about the way it dealt with the requests he made for information over the preceding 20 months. ACW’s chief executive responded on 15 August 2012. I was not satisfied with the response, so I wrote to the chief executive on 27 August to ask him to look at his complaint again. The chief executive replied on 31 August to say that he
did not think this would be helpful and suggested that I write to the Independent Complaint Review Service (ICRS) instead. I did so on 17 September.
After initial assessment my complaint was accepted for investigation under stage three of the complaints procedure. The terms of reference for the investigation were agreed with myself and ACW on 16 October and they began their investigation on 17 October 2012.
My complaint was about aspects of ACW’s work in my capacity as a trustee of the Welsh Jazz Society. The report details the tortuous correspondence I had with the ACW to wring some information from them.
There were three recommendations arising from the report:
“R1 ACW should apologise to Mr Hodgkins for not responding to his complaint in full.
R2 ACW should give Mr Hodgkins as much information as possible about the intended and
actual use of the £28,000 allocation referred to in Mr Dafydd’s letter of 29 June 2010.
R3 ACW should consider introducing some simple guidance for staff on dealing with stage one
and stage two complaints that incorporates the ombudsman’s guidance on administration
and remedy.”
To see the full report click Independent Complaint Review Service – C. Hodgkins,