Administrative justice, apologies, and the limits of reason-giving

Apologies are among the most common remedies offered by public bodies and are a critical tool for maintaining public trust. Drawing on a survey experiment with 1,198 members of the public, this paper tests influential guidance issued by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman on four key components of an effective apology—Regret, Responsibility, Reason, and Remedy—by examining attitudes to a Local Authority’s apology when a social care assessment goes wrong. We observe that the content of an apology matters, but not across all currently prescribed elements: accepting responsibility, offering a remedy and expressing regret significantly enhance satisfaction and trust; but providing reasons—the element grafted onto ombudsman apology frameworks from the administrative justice tradition—has no discernible effect. We posit two explanatory theories as to why reason-giving appears to lose its force when administration is apologising rather than making initial decisions: because the functional importance of reasons are limited and because they are liable to be read as excuses when administration is already apologising.