60 ANNUAL REPORT 2014 Here at the Ombudsman office, we were not sure that the municipality was right in its decision. But for formal reasons we could not investigate this question because we were not sure either whether it was true that the municipality’s decision could not be appealed. We therefore sent on the woman’s complaint to the municipality for reassessment of the decision. If the municipality maintained its decision, the municipality was to send the complaint on to the National Social Appeals Board. The municipality maintained that the woman could not get the compensation benefit and that there was no right of appeal but, as the Ombudsman had asked, the municipality did send the case on to the National Social Appeals Board. The Board determined that an appeal could be lodged against the decision and even made it clear that the woman could continue to receive the compensation benefit even though she could no longer work a normal number of hours for health reasons. Possibilities of helping in ‘rejected cases’ Each year, the Ombudsman opens around 5,000 cases. Even though many cases are categorised in the statistics as rejected cases, the Ombudsman often helps the complainants in these cases as well. The assistance can be given in many different ways. The assistance may consist of: - Sending the complaint on to the right authority - Helping the citizen get more detailed grounds for a decision - Getting the authority to consider whether a deadline can be waived - Accentuating the most important arguments in the complaints in connection with sending the complaint on to the relevant authority - Contacting the authority to ascertain where the complainant’s case is in the ‘system’, what the case is waiting for, or when the authority expects to make a decision in the case - Guiding the citizen on any other available assistance in the case - Giving the citizen the opportunity to discuss the case on the telephone with one of the Ombudsman’s legal staff. NEW STATISTICS IN 2015 In the Ombudsman’s statistics system all three cases were categorised as rejected cases. This is because the Ombudsman could not for formal reasons at that time consider the key decisions in the cases: whether the elderly couple should receive a reduced pension and repay a large amount of money, whether the municipality should give the former bank employee a decision which gave access to