Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about third party top-up fees she paid towards her mother’s residential care costs. The complaint lies outside our jurisdiction because it is late and there are not good grounds to consider it now.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mrs X, complains about third party top-up payments she and her father paid towards her mother’s care home costs between 2016 and 2021.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
6. I sent the complainant a draft of my decision and considered her comments in response.

Back to top

My assessment

7. Mrs X complains about third party top-up payments she and her father paid towards her mother’s care home fees between 2016 and 2021 which she believes were unlawful. Mrs X says they paid a total of £27,000. She feels they were emotionally blackmailed by the Council into agreeing the third party top-up.
8. Mrs X complained to the Council about the top-ups in late 2018. The Council sent a final response, which signposted Mrs X to this office, in January 2019.
9. Mrs X says she submitted two complaints to this office, by post, in December 2018 and then in November 2019 but did not receive a response. We have not received any complaints by post from Mrs X. We received an online complaint in January 2019. This did not contain sufficient information for us to consider the complaint. The records show we closed the complaint for this reason, and advised the complainant of this. We do not now hold any further detail on this complaint as due to the passage of time, the file retention period has passed and the records have been destroyed.
10. The law says a complaint should be made to us within 12 months of a person first becoming aware of the matter they wish to complain about. Mrs X first became aware of the matter in 2016 when she started paying her mother’s top-up fees and so the complaint is very late. Mrs X could have been reasonably expected to have made further contact with this office much sooner to check her 2018 and 2019 postal complaints had been received when she did not receive a response. I see no good grounds to exercise discretion to consider this matter now, almost six years on from Mrs X first becoming aware of the matter.

Back to top

Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint. It lies outside our jurisdiction because it is late and I see no good grounds to exercise discretion to consider this very late complaint now.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman