Sarah Prison officer Vestre Fængsel 20 CASE NO. 17/03833 CASE NO. 17/00122 What is the price for buying oneself off of the muni­ cipality’s reversion right to one’s home? Is the calcula­ tion to be based on the public property assessment or on an estate agent’s assessment? It was a slow process to reach a conclusion in a 40-year-old sailor’s work-related injury case: after the case had been pending for more than three years, the sailor was told that it would take another two years before he could get clarification. The sail­ or wrote to the Ombudsman that once again his case had ended up at the bottom of the pile. The workrelated injury had cost him his career at sea, and the waiting time for clarification of the compensation put him under additional psychological and financial pressure. On behalf of a number of home owners in Copenha­ gen, a practising lawyer complained that the muni­ cipal council of the City of Copenhagen had, without notice, changed the calculation method for a buyout programme for properties subject to reversion rights. The City of Copenhagen referred to its duty to admin­ ister its assets in a financially responsible manner. In that way, it became more costly for the owners of the approximately 1,200 Copenhagen properties to which the City of Copenhagen has the reversion rights to buy themselves off of the reversion right. The Ombudsman did not wish to consider the calcu­ lation matter. Among other things, he wrote to the lawyer that the Ombudsman must respect the mu­ nicipal council’s right to decide how to allocate the City of Copenhagen’s resources The Ombudsman Act requires that the Ombudsman take into consideration the special circumstances under which municipalities and regions operate when he assesses their administration. The Ombudsman sent the complaint on to the direc­ tor of Labour Market Insurance and pointed out the sailor’s situation. Shortly after, the sailor received a phone call with the information that his case would be concluded within one month. Each year, the Ombudsman processes many com­ pla­ints about authorities’ case processing times (782 complaints in 2017). Often, the Ombudsman sends the complaints on to the authority in question, partly to draw attention to the citizen’s dissatisfaction with the case processing time, partly in order for the au­ thority to give the citizen an update as to when a reply can be expected. CASE NO. 17/03166 The Ombudsman received a complaint from an author who had been refused access to files at the DBC (the Danish Library Centre). The DBC had understood that the author requested access to files about the author’s own correspon­ dence with a purchasing consultant for libraries about a previous publication – a correspondence which was not in the DBC’s possession. But actually the author wanted access to the DBC’s correspondence with a purchasing consultant about the author’s most recent book. The Ombudsman therefore sent the complaint on to the DBC with an explanation of the misunder­ standing. Subsequently, the DBC allowed the author access to the material. Each year, the Ombudsman processes a large num­ ber of complaints about authorities’ refusals to grant access to files. Some complaints are from citizens who want access to a case to which they are a party or believe that they are a party. Other complaints are from journalists who want access to an authority’s documents as part of their research.