The Home Office has launched a new Independent Examiner of
Complaints (IEC) service for customers of the Department’s
immigration services.
In doing so, the Home Office has fulfilled another of the
recommendations in Wendy Williams’ Windrush Lessons Learned
Review, published in March 2020.
Introducing an IEC service brings the Department in line with
several other public service delivery departments such as the
Department for Work and Pensions and His Majesty’s Revenue and
Customs.
If customers are not satisfied with the final response to their
complaints, they will have an opportunity to have their case
reviewed independently by the IEC.
Although the IEC will not have any remit over immigration
decisions, which remain subject to existing appeal processes,
they will apply greater scrutiny and ultimately increase public
confidence in the customer services delivered by the Home Office,
as well as helping to manage reputational risk.
In making her original recommendation, Wendy Williams proposed
that the new service should have the ability to identify systemic
issues within the immigration system. The IEC will achieve that
by using the data and insight from complaints to consider why
particular issues might be arising and feed them back into the
department to support the continuous improvement of services.
The Home Office is pleased to announce that, following a fair and
open recruitment process, Moi Ali has been appointed as the new
Independent Examiner of Complaints. She will be supported by an
Office for the IEC, based in Stoke-on-Trent.
Ms Ali has a background in independent complaints review.
For the last 4 years she has been the Independent Assessor
of Complaints for the Crown Prosecution Service and she will
continue in that role on a part-time basis. She is passionate
about providing a genuinely independent service, and about
helping organisations to identify learning and wider lessons from
complaints in order to improve their service.
Her approach is to understand the complainant journey and
perspective, and to support staff to provide a
complainant-centric service.
Further information on the
Independent Examiner of Complaints.
