St Albans City Council (19 004 824)
Category : Adult care services > Disabled facilities grants
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 02 Sep 2019
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: Ms B complains about the Council’s delay in determining the Disabled Facilities Grant for her child in 2017. The Ombudsman will not investigate the complaint because the events complained about happened too long ago to be investigated now and so fall outside our jurisdiction.
The complaint
- The complainant, who I refer to as Ms B, says the Council, on receiving her application for a Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) for works to adapt her home for her disabled child, took a year between 2016 and 2017 to make its decision.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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)
How I considered this complaint
- In considering the complaint I spoke to Ms B and reviewed the information she and the Council provided.
What I found
- Ms B’s child has cerebral palsy. They live in a housing association property which requires adaptations for her child.
- Ms B applied to the Council in 2016 for a DFG. She says it took the Council a year to respond to her application. In 2017 it awarded her the maximum grant available of £30,000. Her housing association has allocated her £60,000 towards the cost of eligible adaptation works at the property.
- More recently Ms B has sought further monies to fund the work and the Council has responded to a complaint she made that it had indirectly discriminated against her child.
Assessment
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
- The restriction highlighted at paragraph 2 of this statement applies to Ms B’s complaint about the Council’s delay between 2016 and 2017. I have seen no grounds which warrant exercising discretion to investigate the complaint now.
Final decision
- The Ombudsman will not investigate Ms B’s complaint about the Council’s delay between 2016 and 2017 because the events complained about happened too long ago to be investigated now and so the complaint falls outside our jurisdiction.
Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman