Equalities award for Evan  One of our Assistant Ombudsmen, Evan Lerwill, has been given an outstanding contribution award for his work on embedding Human Rights and Equalities duties into the way we investigate Evan has been awarded this year's Ombudsman Association award for the way he has spearheaded our efforts to promote and protect people's rights and ensure lessons from casework have the widest possible impact. Evan's efforts have opened the door for other Ombudsmen schemes to adopt a similar approach. He represented us at the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, alongside the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, representing a unified approach from the public ombudsman sector and human rights regulator in England. | Ombudsman update Over the last few months, our Ombudsman Paul Najsarek has been discussing our work with stakeholders across government and related organisations. He has met with, among others, the Department for Levelling Up, the Chairs of the Education and Levelling Up Select Committees, and representatives from organisations such as the Local Government Association and Lawyers in Local Government. He has used these meetings to introduce himself as the new Interim Ombudsman and to talk about how our casework findings inform policy debates and how our powers could be changed to give more access to people speaking up about concerns with local services – as detailed in our Triennial Review. Drawing on our casework, we have also provided comments to a number of Department for Education consultations, including on children's social care King's birthday honour  Former Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Michael King has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in His Majesty the King's Birthday Honours. Mr King served as the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman from 2017 to March 2023, having previously been our Chief Executive and serving more than 30 years in the public sector including as a trading standards officer. His Majesty the King's Honours recognise the valuable service and contribution of people to charity and their industry or profession. | Annual letters to councils coming soon Next month we will be sending our annual review letters to local authorities. These report back our complaint statistics and any comments on how authorities have worked with us over the last year. The letters are a key part of how we encourage scrutiny of public services, and many authorities support this by sharing our letters with their elected members and relevant scrutiny committees. Look out for our complaint statistics and copies of review letters for every local authority the Your Council's Performance map from 26 July. We will publish a report at the same time summarising the national trends for local government complaints in 2022-23. News you may have missed... | 
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