It is easy to think of people’s human rights being infringed as an extreme concept. Something associated with war-torn countries or oppressed communities facing political persecution.

But in fact, the idea of having some basic rights as a human being is intrinsic to everyone. It is closer to home and affects every aspect of our day-to-day lives.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, famously said:

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home… the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.

These basic expectations and rights, therefore, are highly relevant to the complaints we investigate about local services. This report shares the stories from our investigations, in which people’s basic rights have been infringed.

Whether that’s frustrations about missed bin collections, the mistreatment of a loved one in a care home, to the local sports facility being inaccessible. These stories – and many others we highlight – are driven by a familiar set of issues: the principle of people being treated with fairness, respect, dignity, on equal terms, and recognised as an individual. We all have a right to expect these basic standards when we use public services.

We chose to publish this report for a few reasons. The more awareness we can raise about people’s basic rights, and how they should be protected and promoted when using public services, the easier it is, for both service users and service providers, to recognise when things have gone wrong.

For councils, we want to instil the importance of placing people’s rights at the heart of their services. It should inform the way they design them from the ground up, as well as play an active part in the day-to-day decisions being made. Where services are outsourced to third party companies, councils remain ultimately responsible for how they are delivered. They need to retain enough oversight to ensure people’s rights aren’t being compromised.

When things do go wrong, councils should think about whether people’s rights have been affected, ensure that things are put right, and see that lessons are learned for the future.

In demonstrating what good and bad looks like, we have also highlighted some stories in which we did not find the council at fault. We have seen examples where councils have considered carefully how their policies might impact on the local population and thought about people’s rights as part of daily decision-making.

Lastly, we want to help councils understand the standards we expect on this topic. Our Principles of Good Administrative Practice explains that we expect organisations to get things right, when they run services. A crucial part of achieving this is by making sure the rights of people are considered at all stages of their processes.

However, this should never be a perfunctory or reductive box-ticking exercise – as highlighted in one of the stories in this report. We do not necessarily expect councils to make explicit reference to rights-based legislation in everything they do. Rather, it should be clear to everyone, from looking at the facts of each complaint, that organisations have not infringed people’s rights.

I call on councils to fully commit to a rights-based mindset towards service design and delivery. It will mean fewer issues are likely to escalate to us or the courts, and it ensures that people do not suffer prolonged injustice.

Furthermore, these “close to home” situations that Roosevelt so vividly expressed are exactly the kind of interactions where council services so often touch people’s lives. And as she went on to say, “these are places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.”

Michael King

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman