ABSTRACT

Grievances are endemic to the social system. The inability of the judicial and political processes to cater adequately for the multiplicity of grievances generated by an interventionist state has been well observed, even in those jurisdictions where the expectations for redress from those processes are greater than in Britain (Stewart 1984; Taylor 1986). 1 One might expect that after ten years of policies aimed at getting the state off the citizen’s back and encouraging the citizen to opt out of public provision of services, there would have been a corresponding decrease in complaints mechanisms and the need for them in the public sector. The reality defies such a simple analysis.