If a NSW government agency, a local council or a prison gets something wrong and will not fix it, the NSW Ombudsman is where you are told to go. The service is free and independent. Unlike the Commonwealth Ombudsman, it has no duty to investigate: the Ombudsman Act 1974 says the Ombudsman "may" investigate, and in deciding whether to, may have regard to "such matters as he or she thinks fit".
In 2024-25 the Office finalised 16,658 actionable complaints. About 77 per cent were finalised at assessment. That includes giving advice and, in some cases, contacting the agency on the complainant's behalf, but not inquiries. In 23 per cent it took what it calls "further investigatory action", almost all of it preliminary inquiries. It finalised nine formal investigations.
That 23 per cent is a real improvement. Three years earlier it was 13 per cent. The Office says it has more than doubled the number of complaints on which it takes investigatory action. Formal investigations commenced rose from one in 2021-22 to 15 in 2024-25.
The money came back
For more than a decade the Office said it could not do its job properly for lack of money. In 2009-10 it wrote that "we have not been able to conduct as many investigations as we have in the past". In 2022 it told Ministers that "it is likely the Ombudsman is not investigating all matters that warrant further scrutiny". The Auditor-General and a Legislative Council committee agreed that the way integrity agencies were funded was a problem.
Funding was increased from 2022-23. The Office's expenses rose from $25.8 million in 2020-21 to $57.0 million in 2024-25, and its staff from about 120 to 250. Integrity agencies no longer pay efficiency dividends, and a parliamentary committee now examines the Office's budget. In May 2026 the Ombudsman, Paul Miller, told that committee that the Office's core funding "has remained effectively stable" since it was re-baselined, and that it had not sought new money.
Service has not followed
The Office sets no service targets for complaint handling. It last published targets in 2017-18. In its 2023-24 report it said it would "use our results to establish targets". The 2024-25 report contains none.
Its own surveys are not encouraging. In 2024-25, 33 per cent of people who made an actionable complaint were satisfied with the level of service. Twenty-two per cent said their complaint was resolved effectively, and 22 per cent thought the outcome was fair. Every timeliness measure it publishes moved the wrong way: the share of complaints finalised within a week fell from 56 to 43 per cent, and the share of contacts acknowledged and assessed within 10 days fell from 86 to 77 per cent. Most complaints are still finalised within 90 days, and almost all within a year.
The Office does not publish how many complaints are open or how old they are. Regulator Review found no such figure in its annual reports, the committee evidence it read or its media releases.
What complainants get
The annual reports do not say how many complaints led to a remedy, an apology, a changed decision or compensation. The last outcome measure appeared in 2017-18.
The Office can measure it. In May 2026 the Ombudsman told the parliamentary committee that of 2,120 complaints given further investigatory action between July 2025 and February 2026, "around 26 per cent have subsequently resulted in the agency taking some form of corrective or remedial action". That figure has not appeared in an annual report, and it says nothing about the three in four complaints closed at assessment.
Measures that went missing
Read 25 years of reports in order and some tables disappear. Until 2016-17 each report carried an agency-by-agency table showing what was done with every complaint in the core jurisdiction, including a column for adverse findings against the agency. That column recorded no adverse findings in 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17. The table was then dropped from the report; the Office said the detail had moved to its website. Performance indicators with benchmarks were dropped after 2017-18 with no reason given. Complainant satisfaction was not reported for five years. No count of findings against agencies was published from 2017-18 to 2021-22.
Some measures have come back. Satisfaction results returned in 2022-23, and the Office now counts investigations that end in findings of wrong conduct: eight in 2024-25.
Where it does well
The Office's large investigations are its strength. In 2024 it found that Revenue NSW's automated system for taking money from the bank accounts of people with unpaid fines had operated "contrary to law" from January 2016 to March 2019. It has reported on inmate discipline, on child protection and on automated decision-making across government. Agencies accepted 51 of the 52 recommendations they responded to in 2024-25. Since 2024 it has published a casebook every six months covering every investigation it completes.
The Revenue NSW report also records something else. The Office had the garnishee system under formal investigation from March 2016. That investigation focused on hardship, but in December 2018 the Office asked Revenue NSW to get legal advice on whether the automation was lawful. In May 2019 it discontinued the investigation, although Revenue NSW had not agreed to get the advice. The unlawfulness finding came five years later.
Escalation
When an agency ignores its findings, the Office's last resort is a report to Parliament under section 27, which the Minister must answer. The annual reports from 2000-01 to 2024-25 record one, in 2022, on strip searches of children in youth detention; the government rejected its recommendations. A second, on inmate discipline, followed in March 2026. Both were made by the current Ombudsman.
Who checks the Ombudsman
NSW has something the Commonwealth does not: a parliamentary committee that can veto the Ombudsman's appointment and examines the Office's budget. But the Act does not authorise the committee to reconsider any decision not to investigate a particular complaint. A complainant can ask the Office for one internal review. After that, its policy says, "No further reviews or appeals will be considered". Review requests fell from 308 in 2003-04, when police complaints were still in the Office's jurisdiction, to 16 in 2024-25.
The grade
Regulator Review's proposed grade is D: good systemic work and a real recovery in investigatory effort, weighed against a complaint service that sets no targets, satisfies one complainant in three, and does not publish what people get from it, three years after its funding problems were fixed.
The full analysis and sources are in the accompanying report.