When someone complains about their council and the council fails to sort it out, an independent watchdog (the LGSCO) can investigate — this is the share of those investigations where the watchdog found the council at fault. It's the headline 'how often was the council actually wrong' figure. A high rate means most investigated complaints turned out to be justified; a low rate means the council was usually vindicated. It swings wildly when only a few cases were investigated.
| name | lgsco_uphold_rate |
|---|---|
| dataset | 09-ombudsman-lgsco |
| kind | extracted |
| type | percentage |
| unit | % of detailed investigations |
| grain | council-year |
| role | outcome |
| source | data/lgsco/2-Complaints-Decided-{yy}-{yy}.csv, column `Uphold rate (%)` (also in file 3 as `Uphold Rate (%)`) |
| 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 | Headline per-council fault rate — strong outcome, volatile at small investigation counts. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Share of detailed investigations that were upheld against the council. The headline fault rate, but the denominator is investigations only, so it is volatile for small councils with few investigated cases. Stored as strings like 67% in file 2.