Oxfordshire County Council (23 016 510)
Category : Other Categories > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 04 Mar 2024
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint the Council delayed in reviewing contact restrictions. The Council has already apologised for the delay. Any outstanding injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
The complaint
- Ms X complained about delays in the Council reviewing contact restrictions it had placed on her. She said the Council should have reviewed the restrictions in October 2023, but it did not send her the outcome of the review until December 2023.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide:
- there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
- any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint the Council delayed in reviewing its contact restrictions with her. The Council reviewed the contact restrictions in August 2023. It wrote to her and said it would review these again at the end of November 2023. The Council sent Ms X an email in November 2023, with an updated communication plan. In December it wrote to her and said it was keeping the contact restrictions in place. It set out the reasons for this. It apologised for the delay in sending that letter.
- There was a short delay in the Council sending out the contact restriction review letter. We would not consider that delay significant enough to be considered fault. In any event, Ms X had an updated communication plan and could contact the Council. Therefore, we would also not consider any injustice significant enough to justify our involvement.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to justify our involvement.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman