The Press Complaints Commission has carried out a survey to examine its work and accessibility.

As we revealed in November, the Commission has seen complaints up by 39 per cent year on year from 2002 to 2003 – but despite that rise, it is still meeting the requirements of the public.

The latest customer satisfaction survey – for 2003 – shows an improvement over the previous year in almost every category.

It questioned people who had complained about actions of the press through the Commission.

Crucially, in those cases which involved a possible breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice and were either upheld or resolved following the Commission’s intervention, 96 per cent of complainants considered that their complaint had been dealt with satisfactorily or very satisfactorily.

Seventy-eight per cent of all respondents found that the time taken for the complaint to be handled was about right (73 per cent in 2002), and 85 per cent – the same figure as last year – found the Commission’s staff to be ‘helpful’ or ‘very helpful’.

Ninety-six per cent thought that the PCC’s printed information was clear or very clear.

Overall, 62 per cent of all complainants (up from 59 per cent in 2002) considered that their complaint had been dealt with satisfactorily or very satisfactorily, while 64 per cent considered that their complaint had been handled thoroughly or very thoroughly (61 per cent in 2002).

These figures are especially encouraging as in 66 per cent of all cases the commission concluded that there was either no breach of the Code or no grounds to pursue an investigation following a suitable offer from the editor concerned.

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