Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about a children services telephone call. It is unlikely our investigation would find enough significant fault causing enough injustice to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, say the Council should not have telephoned him.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word 'fault' to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:
• it is unlikely we would find fault, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify the cost of our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information Mr X provided with his complaint and the Council’s replies which it provided. I considered Mr X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.

Back to top

What I found

4. Mr X has been involved with the Council’s children services team about issues relating to the care and safeguarding of his children. He has also been involved in private law proceedings to decide the children’s care.
5. Mr X says he was the victim of domestic abuse from his children’s mother. He says this includes around 60 unsubstantiated allegations about him.
6. Mr X says that in mid December 2019 the Council’s children services team telephoned him about another allegation made by the children’s mother. Mr X says the Council should not have telephoned him. He says the mother is using the Council to harass him. Mr X says there have been multiple calls and allegations over the previous 18 months. He has not been able to provide any detail, or evidence, to support this.
7. Mr X also complains about the way the Council replied to his complaint.

Analysis

8. It is unlikely our investigation could say that one telephone call caused significant injustice to Mr X. If a child protection referral has been made against Mr X it is also unlikely we would find fault in the Council checking this out.
9. We previously considered and decided a complaint from Mr X in October 2019 which included how the Council dealt with referrals. We cannot cover the same events again.
10. Mr X has provided insufficient information for us to investigate his complaint about multiple calls and allegations over the previous 18 months.
11. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

Back to top

Final decision

12. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is unlikely our investigation would find any significant fault which caused significant enough injustice to warrant an investigation.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman