NHS organisations are reporting growing challenges managing increasingly complex complaints, including a rise in AI-generated complaints that can be lengthy, repetitive and difficult to investigate efficiently. Recent reporting from the Health Service Journal highlighted concerns from trusts about the operational impact these complaints are having on already stretched teams.
At the same time, complaint volumes continue to rise nationally. According to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), the NHS received more than 256,000 written complaints last year, almost double the number recorded a decade ago, while the Ombudsman considered over 43,000 complaints, more than 14% higher than the previous year.
The PHSO’s new strategy emphasises the importance of ensuring complaints are used to drive improvement across public services, stating:
“Complaints provide an early warning of where services are going wrong and must be used to drive improvement, not just respond when things go wrong.”
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), April 2026
Paula Sussex CBE, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, also said:
“Mistakes will happen – how those mistakes are addressed, and what is learned from them, is crucial to rebuilding that trust.”
Further information on the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s new strategy to use complaints as a catalyst for public service improvement is available here: New Ombudsman strategy aims to turn complaints into catalyst for public service improvement
Our upcoming NHS Complaints Summit on Thursday 2nd July 2026 will focus on improving complaints handling through the NHS Complaint Standards, including responding to AI-enabled complaints, improving response times, integrating complaints with PSIRF investigations and ensuring complaints lead to meaningful learning and service improvement.
