Public Authorities

From November 4th 2004 Monitoring Officers in each Local, Police, Fire and other Public Authorities are responsible for investigating complaints against Members of Public Authorities received by the Standards Board for England.

If you receive a complaint from the Standards Board for England there are two ways you can do the investigation;

Internally. Commit staff time and resources to investigating the complaint. Often your staff would be more usefully employed in their permanent jobs rather than working on something where they may not have sufficient experience. Could you claim that an employee was completely impartial in their investigation?

Externally. An experienced investigator can undertake to investigate the complaint and report back on whether the complaint is justified or not. They are also completely impartial and independent.

PSI Ltd is a private company specialising in investigating complaints against Members of Public Authorities. We have a team of 400 ex-police officers all of whom have years of investigative experience, giving you the skills and expertise to carry out your investigation without draining your own resources. We can even present our findings to your Standards Committee on your behalf to demonstrate the impartiality of the investigation.

We are skilled in evidence preservation to provide you with a full audit trail showing the thoroughness and detail of the investigation.

By using PSI Ltd to do the investigation rather than doing it internally you also benefit from the following;

• All investigations are confidential - we don't speak to any outside agencies.
• We aim to complete 95% of investigations into complaints within 85 days.
• We are in regular contact with the Standards Board for England so you can be assured we operate within their guidelines.
• We will establish whether there has been a breach of the Code of Ethics in deciding whether the complaint is valid or not.
• You remain impartial to the investigation process and can thus retain a professional working relationship with those being investigated before, during and after the investigation.