Summary: We upheld a complaint made on behalf of Mr C, finding the Council delayed in carrying out an assessment of his social care needs. It also communicated poorly with him and his representative at times, while he waited for the assessment to begin. This caused injustice to Mr C as he did not receive the care and support he needed and he experienced unnecessary distress. The Council has accepted these findings and at the end of this statement we set out action it agreed to take to remedy that injustice and improve its service.

The complaint

1. Ms B, a representative of an advocacy service, complained on Mr C’s behalf, who is a young adult with autism. She complained the Council delayed in completing a care needs assessment for Mr C, which he asked for in April 2024. She said it also delayed in replying to her complaints about its service.
2. Ms B said because of the delay Mr C struggled with unmet care needs. In particular, he experienced significant levels of anxiety, limiting his ability to access essential services.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. The Ombudsman’s view, based on caselaw, is that ‘service failure’ is an objective, factual question about what happened. A finding of service failure does not imply blame, intent or bad faith on the part of the council involved. There may be circumstances where we conclude service failure has occurred and caused an injustice to the complainant despite the best efforts of the council. This still amounts to fault. (R (on the application of ER) v CLA (LGO) [2014] EWCA civ 1407) 
5. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
6. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone has a right of appeal, reference or review to a tribunal about the same matter. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to use this right. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
7. The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the Tribunal in this decision statement.
8. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(1), as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

9. I considered evidence provided by Ms B and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
10. I gave Ms B and the Council opportunity to comment on a draft version of this decision statement. I took account of any comments or further evidence they provided, before finalising the decision statement.

Back to top

What I found

Relevant Legal Considerations

Care Needs assessments / Care and Support plans

11. Sections 9 and 10 of the Care Act 2014 require councils to carry out an assessment for any adult who appears to need care and support. The assessment must cover the adult’s needs, the impact of those needs on their wellbeing and the results they want to achieve. It must also involve the individual and where suitable their carer or any other person they might want involved.
12. The law places no set timescale on how long councils have to complete an assessment. They must do so over a suitable and reasonable timescale considering the urgency of needs and any variation in those needs. Councils should tell people when their assessment will take place and keep them informed throughout the assessment.
13. Following an assessment, if the Council is to meet someone’s care needs, it must have found the following:

• first, that their needs arise from, or relate to, a physical or mental impairment or illness;
• second, that because of their needs, they cannot achieve outcomes in two or more of the following domains:
1. managing and maintaining nutrition;
2. maintaining personal hygiene;
3. managing toilet needs;
4. keeping themselves appropriately clothed;
5. being able to make use of their home safely;
6. keeping a habitable home environment;
7. developing and maintaining family or other personal relationships;
8. accessing and engaging in work, training, education or volunteering;
9. making use of necessary facilities or services in the local community including public transport, and recreational facilities or services; or
10. carrying out any caring responsibilities they have for a child.
• third, because they cannot achieve these outcomes, there will likely be a significant impact on their wellbeing.

14. Where the Council finds the eligibility criteria above met, then the Care Act 2014 also requires it to provide a care and support plan. This should consider:

• what needs the person has;
• what they want to achieve;
• what they can do by themselves or with existing support; and
• what care and support may be available in the local area. 

Special educational needs

15. A young person with special educational needs may have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan up to the age of 25. This document sets out their needs and the arrangements made to meet them. The EHC Plan has sections, which include:

• Section D, which explains any social care needs the young person has; and
• Section H, which sets out what provision the Council has made to meet any social care needs.

16. Section 36(20) of the Children and Families Act 2014 defines an EHC assessment as including an assessment of the child or young person’s social care needs. Where a council social care services service has no previous record of supporting a young person it must complete a new assessment to identify needs.  
17. If a young person disagrees with the social care support set out in the EHC Plan they can make a complaint to the council. Alternatively, if they are going to appeal to the Tribunal about other parts of an EHC Plan, they can ask the Tribunal to consider its content. If the Tribunal makes findings covering the social care sections of an EHC Plan, the findings are not binding on the council.

Council complaint procedure

18. The Council has a complaint procedure which it summarises on its website. It has a single stage where a manager from the service complained about will reply to the complaint. The Council says they will do this within 20 working days.
19. The Council says that if someone is unhappy with its reply then they can complain to this office.

The key facts

20. Mr C is a young adult with autism. At the beginning of the events covered by this complaint (March 2024) he had an Education, Care and Health (EHC) Plan as he has special educational needs. He met with his SEN caseworker and the Council provided a note of that meeting. While it focused on Mr C’s experiences of education and his future educational ambitions, the note also said Mr C wanted help with finding “housing where there is support”.
21. The meeting note did not record the Council giving Mr C advice on his housing choices. Nor on contacting its adult care services. However, the following month (April 2024) a charity contacted the Council’s ‘preparing for adult’ (PFA) team on Mr C’s behalf. This service assesses the care needs of young adults. The Council says it “audited” that contact in the middle of the month and then it tried to contact Mr C, but without success.
22. However, by the end of the month Mr C contacted it directly by email. He said he wanted support with accommodation (supported living), independence skills and anxiety management. The PFA team checked with the SEN service which confirmed it maintained an EHC Plan for Mr C. Although just a few days later the SEN service wrote to Mr C saying that it planned on ending his EHC Plan. In early May 2024 Mr C objected to this proposal. In his comments, he said he had made the Council aware on “multiple occasions” that he wanted social care support. He set out what he would like his EHC Plan to cover which included opportunities to do voluntary work, work experience, improve his independent living skills and access to the community.
23. Despite Mr C’s objections, the Council went on to end his EHC Plan. Its SEN service told the PFA team of this decision. When it ended Mr C’s Plan, the SEN service said that it would work “closely” with adult care services to help it identify Mr C’s care and support needs. The Council recognises that did not happen.
24. Mr C appealed the Council’s decision to end his EHC Plan. In doing so, he did not ask the Tribunal to consider any need he might have for social care.
25. In July 2024, Ms B’s advocacy service first contacted the PFA Team on Mr C’s behalf, repeating his wish to find supported housing. The Council said in response to this contact it placed Mr C’s case on a waiting list for allocation to a social worker.
26. It went on to assign Mr C’s case to a social worker in early August 2024. At the end of the month, she wrote to Mr C asking him to get in touch, saying that two attempts she had made to contact him had not succeeded. She wanted to complete a needs assessment with him. A week later, in early September, the social worker wrote to Ms B's advocacy service and asked if they could arrange contact as she had still not spoken to Mr C. At the end of that month, the social worker recorded Mr C had declined to meet her in person.
27. The Council did not provide us case notes or emails confirming what happened next. But the social worker said that she offered to complete a needs assessment with Mr C online, and that he also declined this. The next case record is an email dated from late January 2025, where the social worker said she had now booked an appointment for mid-February 2025 to complete the assessment online.
28. In between, in October 2024, Ms B had made a complaint on Mr C’s behalf. She said she had made repeated attempts to contact Mr C’s social worker but had no contact from her, except for a telephone call in August 2024. Ms B said in that call the social worker appeared to show little understanding of Mr C’s needs associated with his autism and that he had poor mental health. She said Mr C needed reasonable adjustments to take part in an assessment. Ms B suggested as a “last resort” the Council might arrange for a psychotherapist to support Mr C during an online assessment.
29. At the end of January 2025, the Council replied to Ms B’s complaint. It apologised for the delay in doing so. It said this was because of a high rate of staff absence in the PFA team. The manager replying for the Council said as a result he did not learn of the complaint straight away. The reply went through the Council’s attempted contacts with Mr C as set out above. It noted the social worker had now arranged for the online assessment to complete in mid-February. The reply signposted Ms B to this office if she remained dissatisfied.
30. In February 2025, a few days before the appointment, Ms B contacted the Council. She said she had made “multiple attempts” to contact the social worker to advise Mr C could not attend the appointment booked for him but received no reply. She asked the Council to re-arrange to appointment, change Mr C’s social worker, make reasonable adjustments to help Mr C take part in the assessment and review its practice.
31. The Council did not record this contact from Ms B as asking it to escalate her complaint or a new complaint. But it did forward the email to the PFA team to respond.
32. The Council did not reply to Ms B’s contact of February 2025. It told us Mr C’s social worker was absent from work, having extended periods of leave between December 2024 and April 2025.
33. In March 2025 Ms B contacted this office. She complained at the delay in the Council assessing Mr C’s care needs and at the Council failing to reply to her contact in February 2025.
34. In May 2025 the Council told us it wanted to re-arrange its assessment of need with Mr C. It said that it would be employing two new social workers in the PFA team the following month and implied it would assign his case to one of them. It said it wanted a “summary of [Mr C’s] communication preferences and specific requirements” to help it complete the assessment and to inform any other communications. It said all its social workers had received training on meeting the needs of clients with neurodiversity. The Council cannot identify that it also gave this information to Ms B or Mr C.
35. The Council went on to allocate Mr C’s case to another social worker at the end of May 2025. It said it contacted Ms B’s advocacy organisation three times to arrange an assessment, which followed at the end of June 2025. It then wrote in mid-July for further information from the advocacy organisation and again to send a follow-up email to receive this in mid-August. It then completed the care needs assessment and sent a copy to the advocacy organisation.
36. The Council recorded that Mr C received support from a sibling during the assessment. It also noted Mr C needed to take regular breaks because of his anxiety.
37. The assessment identified Mr C had an eligible need for support in five of the domains set out in paragraph 13. This included that he needed care and support to maintain nutrition, a habitable home environment, to be appropriately clothed and to access work, training or education and the community. The assessment did not identify what support Mr C currently received (if any) in meeting any of these needs, although it noted it lived at home with his parents.
38. The Council went on to complete a care and support plan to provide Mr C with support for four hours a week. Ms B said this was not enough to meet his needs. She also said the Council would not put the plan in place until it had gathered views from Mr C’s parents also, something she questioned as unnecessary.
39. The Council told us that after writing with the outcome of the assessment in August 2025, it received no contact from Mr C, or on his behalf, until November 2025. At that point he accepted the four hours a week support on offer but asked for more support. The Council told us it declined providing him with more support and gave its reasons. The Council did not comment on whether (or when) it began providing any care and support to Mr C.

My findings

40. I considered first our legal powers to investigate Mr C’s complaint. I noted that running alongside Mr C’s request for support from the Council’s adult care services, he appealed to the Tribunal about the Council’s decision to end his EHC Plan.
41. As I explained above, where a complainant has appealed to the Tribunal we must consider if the matter complained about formed, or could have formed, part of the appeal. In this case, I considered Mr C could have asked the Tribunal to include details of his social care needs and provision in his EHC Plan, as part of his appeal.
42. However, I decided to use my discretion to investigate Mr C’s complaint. I considered it was reasonable for Mr C to pursue any need for care and support separately, using the complaint procedure, because:

• any decision made by the Tribunal on Mr C’s need for social care would have had no binding effect on the Council;
• it dealt with Mr C’s request for a social care needs assessment in April 2024 as a stand-alone matter. While there were some communications between its SEN service and its PFA team, it never sought to involve the latter in its response to Mr C’s appeal to the Tribunal;
• Mr C’s appeal concerned a decision to end an EHC Plan. If Mr C’s appeal failed, the Tribunal would have no power to order the Council to produce a Plan containing social care provision only.

43. Next, I considered the substantive issues raised by the complaint, beginning with the complaint about delay. I found it took the Council 17 months to assess Mr C’s social care needs after he first asked it to do so (April 2024 to August 2025)
44. As I noted above the law places no statutory timescale on how long the Council has to begin (or complete) an assessment after receiving such a request. I considered basic good administrative practice required the Council to begin a non-urgent assessment within four to six weeks. I recognised completing assessments can take more time. So, as a benchmark, I considered the Council should have aimed to complete its assessment of Mr C’s social care needs assessment within three months. That meant in this case there was potentially 14 months of delay.
45. In its complaint responses the Council had suggested a lack of engagement from Mr C had caused some of the delay. I found the Council’s social worker made at least three efforts to contact Mr C during August 2024. And at some point before January 2025, she discussed with him undertaking an online assessment, which he agreed to after some early reluctance. I considered some of Mr C’s difficulty in engagement likely arose from his neurodiversity, as opposed to any wish to delay an assessment. But I recognised this still posed some difficulty for the Council. Also, that it had difficulties establishing contact with Ms B’s advocacy organisation following its reassignment of Mr C’s case to a new social worker at the end of May 2025.
46. However, I did not consider these factors added more than between two and three months to the time taken to complete the assessment.
47. Further, it was evident there were significant gaps in the Council progressing Mr C’s request for a care needs assessment:

• between May 2024 and July 2024; when having completed an initial triage the Council delayed in allocating his case to a social worker;
• between September 2024 and January 2025; the Council provided little evidence to explain what its social worker did to progress the assessment between these dates;
• between February 2025 and August 2025; the Council failed to engage with Ms B’s contact sent before the scheduled assessment in February 2025 (which Mr C could not attend). It explained the unforeseen and unavoidable absence of its social worker for periods between December 2024 and April 2025. It also referred to staffing shortages in its PFA team that it had addressed by June 2025. But I had to still note the lack of activity in progressing Mr C’s assessment.

48. I found there was around 12 months avoidable delay therefore in the Council completing Mr C’s social care needs assessment.
49. Alongside this delay I also found times when the Council failed to maintain effective communications with Ms B or Mr C. Ms B explained in her complaint of October 2024, the efforts made by her advocacy service by telephone Mr C’s social worker. I had no reason to doubt this account.
50. Ms B then wrote to the Council in February 2025 when Mr C could not attend his assessment and needed it rearranged. But she received no substantive reply. While I recognised this coincided with the social worker’s unforeseen and unavoidable absence from work, such absences are not an unusual circumstance for large employers like the Council. It should therefore have had measures in place to ensure a response to any telephone calls, emails or other correspondence addressed to the social worker while they were on a long-term absence from work.
51. I also considered the complaint raised a wider point about the Council’s practice when it could not keep pace with the demand for social care assessments. It needed periodically to keep in touch with those waiting. And I considered it needed to give them some information on likely waiting times and contact details if their needs became more urgent. I considered Mr C would not be unique among those needing social care to suffer anxiety. And not knowing what was happening in response to an assessment query could aggravate that anxiety.
52. I also found the Council at fault therefore for its poor communications.
53. The case also highlighted some possible deficiencies in the Council’s record keeping. I asked for case notes and the Council sent me a chronology document and emails exchanged by its social worker. But there was no record of Ms B’s contacts, including the call she had with the social worker in August 2024. Nor all records of direct contacts between the Council social worker and Mr C. This pointed towards further fault by the Council.
54. This lack of records hampered my ability to investigate Ms B’s assertion the Council also failed to make reasonable adjustments to enable its assessment of Mr C’s needs. She explained the point clearly in her complaint of October 2024 and repeated it in her contact of February 2025. Yet on neither occasion did the Council choose to respond. The Council was at fault for this. It was also at fault for its delay in replying to Mrs B’s complaint which took around two months longer than it should have.
55. However, having seen the assessment paperwork completed in August 2025 I found the Council made reasonable adjustments which allowed Mr C to participate. It agreed to an online assessment and Mr C took part in this with support from his sibling and the Council let him take regular breaks.
56. I next considered the consequence to Mr C of the faults set out above. When Mr C’s assessment finally took place the Council found he had eligible needs and agreed it needed to provide him with care and support. I had no reason to find the Council would not have come to the same view had it completed the assessment in summer 2024 as it should have. In which case, and consistent with the approach I set out above I found Mr C experienced a loss of service of 12 months, up to August 2025. That was an injustice.
57. In addition, and giving weight to Mr C’s anxiety, I considered he also experienced unnecessary distress. This was because of the Council’s poor communications and failure to clarify its position on his need for reasonable adjustments. That too was an injustice.
58. I considered no separable injustice arose because of the Council’s poor record keeping. However, the delays by the Council in answering Ms B’s complaint and her contact of February 2025, resulted in some unnecessary time and trouble for Mr C. So, that too was an injustice.
59. The Council accepted these findings and I set out below action it agreed to take, following my recommendation, to remedy this injustice. In recommending action, I was mindful that Ms B had made me aware that she did not consider the Council’s completed assessment of Mr C’s needs had resulted in a satisfactory outcome. She said the care and support offered to Mr C was not enough to meet his needs. And there had been further delay in care and support being in put in place for Mr C because of a wish by the Council to discuss his needs with his parents.
60. Against this, I noted the Council’s account of what happened after it completed its assessment in August 2025. In particular that Mr C and Ms B’s advocacy service had delayed for three months in responding to the offer of care and support. And that it had responded, with reasons, for why it could not provide more support of a type suggested by Mr C. However, its comments did not suggest matters had resolved. In particular, whether by February 2026 Mr C had begun to receive care and support. Nor did it comment on the suggestion that any delay also arose in part because it wanted to speak to Mr C’s parents.
61. This led me to note the August 2025 assessment contained a significant omission. It did not explain what support, if any, Mr C received to meet his needs at the time the social worker completed it. It implied in places Mr C received support from his parents (for example to help keep his home environment clean and to prompt with some aspects of personal care). But it was not clear about what support Mr C received from family in meeting his needs.
62. So, I could understand why the Council may have wanted to speak to Mr C’s parents. Because in writing Mr C’s care and support plan the Council had to identify who would meet his eligible care needs, to include any informal care provided willingly by his family. Although, that said, I considered the Council needed to clarify its reasons with Mr C and be sensitive in its communications about this matter.
63. I remained concerned therefore at any delay in Mr C’s care and support plan taking effect. But I could not make further finding the Council had been at fault either in its offer of care and support, or for that support not yet being in place. I considered doing so would need further investigation falling outside the scope of the time period over which I could investigate the Council’s actions. However, Ms B or Mr C could make a separate complaint about events post-August 2025 if they considered the Council at fault.
64. But that said, I wanted Mr C to benefit from whatever care and support was available to him. So, my recommended actions included a proposal, accepted by the Council, that I hoped would enable that.

Back to top

Agreed Action

65. Above, I identified where fault by the Council caused injustice to Mr C. To remedy that injustice, the Council agreed that within 20 working days of a decision it would:
1. provide an apology to Mr C, accepting the findings of this investigation. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The Council agreed to consider this guidance in making its apology;
2. make a symbolic payment of £1500 to Mr C in recognition of the injustice caused. This comprised a payment of £1200 to Mr C in recognition of the delay in assessing his social care needs and resultant loss of service (12 months at £100 a month) and £300 for the additional distress identified and his time and trouble;
3. offer a meeting with Ms B (or a representative of her advocacy service) to take place within four weeks of it making its offer. It would offer this to try and resolve any outstanding barriers to Mr C receiving care (and the Council would also invite Mr C to that meeting). The focus of the meeting would therefore be anything stopping the Council from putting his care and support in place. But it would also consider any concerns about the scope of the current care and support on offer. The Council would then write to Ms B within 10 working days of the meeting to confirm any decision taken or action agreed arising from the meeting. And it would signpost her to contact us again if dissatisfied with the outcome.
66. In the event Ms B and Mr C wanted to complain following notification of the meeting outcome agreed at paragraph 64c), they could do so direct to this office. We would not expect them to make a further separate complaint via the Council’s complaint procedure.
67. The Council also agreed it would aim to learn lessons from this complaint. Within three months of this decision, it agreed that it would review the following:
1. its current practice and procedure for communicating with those waiting for adult social care needs assessments. I recommended this as people requesting assessments should know if they will receive one and have advice on the likely timescale for when the Council will begin an assessment. They should also know how to contact the Council if they have a change in circumstance that makes their needs more urgent. The Council should also keep in touch with anyone waiting more than three months for an assessment, at intervals of not more than three months, to update on likely timescales for it beginning assessments;
2. its current practice and procedures for when staff unexpectedly become absent from work. I recommended this as I wanted it to ensure that it could respond to urgent contacts whether made by phone, email or other means. And that it had a system in place to also deal with non-urgent contacts where the absence was for more than five working days.
68. The Council agreed to provide us with evidence when it had complied with the above actions.

Back to top

Decision

69. For reasons set out above I upheld this complaint finding fault by the Council caused injustice to Mr C. The Council accepted these findings and agreed action that I considered would remedy his injustice. So, I completed my investigation satisfied with its response.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman