16 | Veterinarian Kim Rasmussen on inspection visit at slaughterhouse in Holeby. 17/05835 The Ombudsman informed a local prison that he was coming on a monitoring visit to the local prison within a given time period. But the local prison was not informed of the exact date of the visit. Therefore, the programme for the visit could not be decided until the day of the visit, and it was not possible to schedule talks with inmates in advance. During the visit, the monitoring team went round the local prison and invited inmates to participate in talks. Nine out of 16 inmates said yes. Through the talks with inmates, the monitoring team got an impression of the conditions at the local prison seen through the inmates’ eyes. The Ombudsman announces most monitoring visits to, for example, the Prison and Probation Service institutions. The reason is that it gives the monitoring team the opportunity to prepare the visit in the best possible way, including ma­king sure management is present during the visit. However, sometimes monitoring visits are unannounced or – as in this case – partly announced. 18/03523 Poor maintenance, mould, lack of fireproofing and unfair rent billing: These were some of the issues which a man wrote about to the Ombudsman. The man specifically complained about his housing association and its caretaker and lawyer. The Ombudsman considers complaints against the public administration, meaning public authorities. Therefore, in his reply to the man, the Ombudsman explained that he could not take any action regarding the housing association, the caretaker and the lawyer. Generally, the Ombudsman does not consider complaints against private individuals and private enterprises and associations. 18/01902 The municipal job centre would no longer collaborate with a sick, arthritic citizen’s represen­ tative. Following a rather long dispute about the citizen’s entitlement to disability pension, the job centre wrote to the representative that her approach and lack of co-operation skills made her ‘quite unsuited to look after a party’s interests’. According to the job centre, the representative had complicated this case as well as previous cases unnecessarily. In the letter to the Ombudsman, the representative pointed out that she normally performed well as a representative in cases at other municipalities. She found that the head of the job centre now prevented her from helping seriously ill citizens. The mayor has the main responsibility for day-today operations in a municipal administration. Therefore, the Ombudsman sent the representative’s complaint on to the municipality so that the mayor could initially consider the complaint about the job centre’s decision. Complaints about a municipality’s case pro­ cessing often have to be taken to the mayor before the Ombudsman can consider the case. For example, this applies to complaints about lack of replies to enquiries, about the muni­ cipality’s case processing times and about municipal staff.