When residents complain to the local government watchdog (the LGSCO) about their council, many complaints are closed after an initial look without a full investigation — too early, outside its remit, or not worth pursuing. This counts those early closures. It matters because it shows how much complaint volume never reaches a verdict: where this is high, raw complaint counts say little about whether the council actually did anything wrong.
| name | lgsco_closed_initial |
|---|---|
| dataset | 09-ombudsman-lgsco |
| kind | extracted |
| type | count |
| unit | complaints/year |
| grain | council-year |
| role | feature |
| source | data/lgsco/2-Complaints-Decided-{yy}-{yy}.csv, column `Closed after Initial Enquiries` |
| period | 2023-24 and 2024-25 editions |
| missingness | Rows exist only for councils in scope of LGSCO; `Upheld decisions per 100,000 residents` and rate columns are blank for zero-decision councils. Percent columns in file 2 are strings like `67%`. Join to Housing Ombudsman data is by name and lossy (ALMO/association names don't match council names). |
| score_note | Full per-council coverage, but early closures say more about triage than council performance. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Complaints assessed and closed by the LGSCO without a detailed investigation. High values dilute the meaning of raw complaint counts — many escalations never reach a fault judgement.