Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the time it has taken to relinquish an appointeeship and the Council’s response to complaints. That is because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s process and an investigation would not add to the Council’s response.

The complaint

1. Ms X has complained about the time taken to relinquish an appointeeship for her adopted son. The process has taken seven months. Ms X is not satisfied with the Council’s response to stage 1 or stage 2 of her complaint.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Ms X said the Council has taken far too long to take over an appointeeship she had.
6. Ms X said the Council has not addressed her complaints adequately at stage 1 or stage 2 of its complaint process.
7. The Council has responded, informing Ms X that for a public body to take over as an appointee is a lengthy process, but it has now gained appointeeship. There is not enough evidence of avoidable delay by the Council to justify investigating.
8. The Council has agreed to finalise reimbursing Ms X with her expenditure, once it receives receipts. There is nothing more we could add if we investigated this part of Ms X’s complaint.
9. We would not investigate a complaint about a council’s complaint process when we are not investigating the substantive issue leading to the complaint.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s process and an investigation would not add to the Council’s response.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman