Department for Work and Pensions

The complainant requested statistics about how many times it failed to send staff to Tribunal hearings annually for five calendar years and how many of those cases were lost by the public authority. The public authority supplied some information and applied section 12(1) to the remainder and advised that it had contacted the Tribunal Service itself (who are part of the Ministry of Justice) who did not collate this information either. The complainant asked the Commissioner to determine whether reasonable advice and assistance was provided to him in this case in line with section 16(1) of the Act. The Commissioner has found that section 16(1) was breached by the public authority. However, he does not require any remedial steps to be taken for the reasons outlined in the Notice.