19 Case No. 13/00228 A woman in a flex job wanted to move to another municipality. She applied well in advance to the new municipality for a flex job there but did not receive any guidance on her rights. She then resigned from her flex job in the old municipality and moved. The woman got neither a new flex job nor the special unemployment and sickness benefit for people on the flexible job scheme because the new municipality considered her unemployment to be voluntary. The woman complained to the Ombudsman, who asked the Employment Appeals Board to consider whether the woman had received adequate guidance from the municipality. When the Employment Appeals Board was closed down, the case passed to the National Social Appeals Board, which came to the conclusion that the municipality ought to have given the woman better guidance. Consequently, the National Social Appeals Board changed the municipality’s decision so that the woman was entitled to the special unemployment and sickness benefit. 45 per cent of the cases which the Ombudsman concluded in 2014 were particularly concerned with the contents of decisions made by public authorities. Case No. 14/02018 Three unmanned motorway service areas were visited by a monitoring team from the Ombudsman in order to check whether toilets for the disabled and other facilities matched the requirements for accessibility for the disabled. A report pointed out some problems regarding the accessibility of the toilets for the disabled for, among others, wheelchair users and people with reduced strength in their arms and hands. Another problem was that it was difficult to find on the Road Directorate’s homepage a list of service areas with toilets for the disabled. The Road Directorate, who is responsible for the service areas, took steps to rectify the shortcomings. In addition, the Road Directorate decided to carry out an inspection of all unmanned motorway service areas in order to ensure better accessibility. The Ombudsman monitors accessibility for the disabled in public places – partly to follow developments in this sector and partly to draw attention to specific faults and shortcomings. Case No. 13/04337 In 2010, it came to the Ombudsman’s attention that the Food and Veterinary Complaints Board of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries was experiencing a sharp increase in the number of complaints about agricultural subsidies, and that the expected case processing time had risen to as much as almost two years. The Ombudsman decided to start an own initiative case on the matter and asked the Ministry’s Department to inform him of any measures taken or planned to bring down the case processing time. He also asked the Department to keep him informed of developments. Subsequently, the Ombudsman received regular updates from the Department on developments in case processing times at the Food and Veterinary Complaints Board. In April 2014, the Department was able to inform the Ombudsman that the average case processing time had dropped from about 12 months to about five months since March 2013. In the light of this development, the Ombudsman closed the case concerning the Food and Veterinary Complaints Board of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries. The Ombudsman has set specific targets for his own case processing times. One of those targets is that 75 per cent of substantively investigated complaint cases are concluded within six months. This target was met in 80 per cent of these cases in 2014. Case No. 14/02518 It was not all right to experiment with the approved treatment methods, a disability care worker with a respirator patient learned. First the hospital’s respirator centre took away his license to function as a respiratory care assistant and subsequently, he was fired and turned away by the temping agency where he was employed. The disability care worker complained to the hospital but the hospital refused to change its point of view. A renewed complaint likewise led nowhere. By the time the disability care worker complained to the Ombudsman, more than a year had passed since the hospital’s first reply. Because the hospital in its second reply had only referred to what it had written earlier, the Ombudsman had to reject the complaint as timebarred. If you wish to complain to the Ombudsman about a decision, you have to do so within 12 months – so stipulates the Ombudsman Act.