Public sector officials must do more to reduce the number of successful appeals made against them, the chair of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council Richard Thomas has said.

Pointing out that the majority of appeals were found in favour of the appellants, Thomas said that public services had a duty to save public money by getting things right in the first place. The board will be producing a report early next year entitled 'Right First Time'.

Thomas added that in many cases services failed to communicate with the appellants, failed to be represented at tribunals and failed to ensure that the mistakes revealed by hearings were not repeated. He said that while in most cases people only went to tribunal so they could see a public official in person, all too often the public body doesn't bother sending anyone to the hearing. More contact between officialdom and ordinary people is essential if such appeals are to be avoided, Thomas said.

"In many cases we are particularly concerned that the public body does not learn [from] the outcome of the tribunal appeal," he told the BBC, "they might put it right in that particular case but they don't change their system ... so the same mistakes being repeated time and time again. Now that is obviously a waste of taxpayers' money [and] it's stressful for the people concerned."

He went on: "Public bodies must get it right first time, whether it's on immigration, social security, taxation, planning, schools admissions and so on. We're not saying that too many cases are successful but what we are saying perhaps is that public bodies are getting it wrong first time – and the figures are quite stark with 41 per cent of social security appeals successful, 37 per cent of immigration appeals, and 43 per cent of appeals by victims of criminal injuries."

Thomas said that as well as public services getting it right first time it was important that people had "user friendly" access to tribunals, claiming that while they are a "success story" they are also the 'Cinderella' of the justice system. But politicians and the legal system need to take this area more seriously "because it is the sharp end of public services", he said.

However, Thomas admitted that the cases heard by tribunals are probably the "tip of the iceberg" and there must be tens of millions of cases that are not heard. "If 1m people need to appeal, there must be cases beneath that where people feel aggrieved or the decision has been wrong in the first place [but they] don't reach a tribunal," he said.

http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=14768