Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s request for repayment of Direct Payments. This is because there is not enough evidence the Council is at fault to justify an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council has asked him to repay direct payments made to his family member because of a misuse of funds.
2. Mr X says the Council has caused him significant distress and is seeking a refund of the repayments he has made, and a waiver of the remaining debt. He also seeks an apology and a financial remedy for injustice caused to him.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
4. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

7. The Council started making Direct Payments to Mr X’s family member (“A”) in 2022. Mr X says the Council failed to review the Direct Payments until December 2024.
8. In December 2024, the Council discovered that some of the Direct Payments had been misused and asked Mr X to repay those payments.
9. Mr X accepted he paid himself from A’s Direct Payments. He said that as he had been providing care for A he thought he could do this. He did not suggest the Council told him he could pay himself, nor that he asked the Council before doing so.
10. The Council agreed for Mr X to repay the debt in instalments, and he did so until he lost his job in late 2025.
11. In December 2025 Mr X complained to the Ombudsman the Council allowed the debt to accrue by not identifying his error because it missed annual reviews of the Direct Payments.
12. Anything that happened before December 2024 is late for investigation by this office. We will not therefore investigate whether the Council carried out annual reviews as that complaint should have been brought to us within 12 months and there is no good reason to look at that now.
13. Regardless of Mr X’s intent, it is agreed the funds have been misused. It is not sufficient to say the Council’s failure to review the Direct Payments allowed this to happen. A lack of review is not the cause of the misuse.
14. Mr X entered an agreement with the Council as a nominated person for A at the outset of the Direct Payments process. If there were any doubts about what the payments could be used for, this should have been raised with the Council.
15. Where money has been used in a way which breaches the basis on which that money was paid, we are not likely to find the Council at fault for asking for that money to be returned.

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Final decision

16. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman