Ombudsman Offices Editing and Proofreading Services

An ombudsman has no power to compel and no budget to distribute. It has the ability to investigate and the ability to publish, and both depend entirely on being believed. That makes every document the office issues a deposit into or a withdrawal from the same account — including the ones that go to a single complainant and are never seen by anyone else, because those are the letters that determine what people say about the office to everyone they know.

We edit what ombudsman and complaint-handling bodies produce — investigation reports and findings, systemic investigation and own-motion reports, outcome letters to complainants including where a complaint is not upheld, early resolution and referral correspondence, jurisdiction and eligibility decisions, recommendations to public authorities and follow-up on implementation, guidance to bodies within jurisdiction on good administrative practice, casework procedure manuals and quality standards, annual reports and casework statistics, submissions to legislatures and oversight committees, public information about how to complain and what the office can do, and accessibility and outreach material for underserved communities. Our editors check that reasoning is visible, that findings are attributed to evidence, and that the tone stays impartial even where the conduct examined was poor.

The letter telling a complainant their complaint is not upheld is the hardest document the office produces and the one most often written to a template. The person has usually been through the authority's own process, waited months, and invested a great deal in being believed. A letter that states the outcome and cites the criteria, without demonstrating that the office understood what happened to them, is received as one more institution closing ranks. We rewrite these so the letter first sets out the complainant's account accurately enough that they recognise it, so the evidence obtained is described including what the authority provided and what the office checked independently, so the reasoning moves visibly from that evidence to the finding, and so anything the office did find — a delay, a poor explanation, a rudeness — is acknowledged even where it does not change the outcome. People accept unwelcome findings far more readily than they accept the impression of not having been heard.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including casework involving identifiable individuals; please redact as your obligations require. We are editors rather than investigators or legal advisers and offer no view on jurisdiction, findings or recommendations. What we can do is make reasoning legible and letters humane without compromising impartiality.