Summary: We will not investigate this late complaint about the Council including Mr Y’s charges for care in Mrs Y’s deferred payment agreement. There is not a good reason for the delay in the matter being brought to the Ombudsman. In any event, further investigation would not achieve a different outcome.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained the Council wrongly included some of Mr Y’s (Mr X’s father’s) charges for care in a Deferred Payment Agreement (DPA) for Mrs Y (Mr X’s mother). He said the Council refused to release a resulting overpayment to the family until they had applied for probate. Mr X said the Council’s actions deprived him and his siblings of the use of these funds for seven years. He wanted the Council to pay them compensate to recognise this.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. 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 further investigation would not lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Mr X complains the Council, in 2018, wrongly included charges for Mr Y’s care within a DPA agreed between the Council and Mrs Y.
7. The Council wrote to one of Mr X’s siblings in 2019, shortly after Mr Y’s death, saying Mr Y’s account remained in credit by over £5,000 because the family had paid a bill that had also been taken into account in the deferred charge assessment.
8. The Council had also told the family by that point that it required them to apply for probate before it could release the funds. The family disagreed, but ultimately accepted a compromise in early 2025 at which point the Council distributed the overpayment evenly between Mr X and his two siblings.
9. Mr X then complained to the Council about its actions in including Mr Y’s charges in Mrs Y’s DPA. Mr X asked the Council to provide a further payment to recognise the length of time the Council had held Mr Y’s funds. The Council explained it would not pay interest. Mr X then brought the complaint to us.
10. The law says people must bring complaints to us within 12 months of finding out about the matter. Mr X says the family did not become properly aware until early 2025 of the root cause of issues they had been challenging over seven years.
11. The family and the Council have been discussing the matter since 2019, and the family could have escalated a complaint to us at that time. We do not require that people have a full understanding of exactly what has gone wrong before they can complain to us. The family had sufficient reasoning in 2019 to complain, and they could therefore have brought the matter to us at that time, for us to establish the cause of any injustice they had experienced. That the family found out further information more recently does not provide a good reason for them not having complained to us at the time. There is not a good reason for the delay in the matter ultimately being brought to us, and so we will not investigate this late complaint.
12. In any event, investigation by us would not achieve a different outcome. The Council refunded the overpayment in early 2025 after Mr X and his siblings had agreed to it being distributed evenly to them. Mr X requests a payment in addition to recognise the time it took the Council to distribute the funds. This is not something investigation by us would achieve. If we investigated the matter we would not recommend the Council pays the family interest. We could not achieve anything more meaningful by investigating this complaint, even if we decided the complaint was not late.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mr X’s late complaint because there is not a good reason for the delay in him complaining to us. In any event, we could not achieve a more meaningful outcome by investigating the matter.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman