Norfolk County Council (18 014 522)

Category : Adult care services > Other

Decision : Upheld

Decision date : 26 Jun 2019

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: Mr X complains about the Council’s response to an email he sent in August 2018. He does not think it should have dealt with it as a complaint and says the refusal to answer some questions is unreasonable. The Ombudsman finds there was fault by the Council in how it handled an email from Mr X listing questions he wanted answering. Although treating it as a complaint was acceptable, it took too long to respond and misapplied its own rule about complaints on matters over 12 months old. This was fault and it caused Mr X an injustice in the form of frustration. The Council has agreed to remedy this by apologising and revisiting its complaint response.

The complaint

  1. Mr X complains the Council refuses to provide him information he has requested about his son’s care arrangements and previous incidents. He is very unhappy with the Council’s response to his email to an officer in August 2018. He does not understand why it handled it as a complaint and believes the Council is unreasonably refusing to answer his questions. Mr X says this adds to his ongoing stress and does not follow previous findings from the Ombudsman in his favour.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

  1. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. 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 an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
  2. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

  1. I spoke with Mr X and read the file of information he sent to the Ombudsman about his complaint. Much the information Mr X sent related to previous complaints and so has not formed part of my decision-making process. I also wrote to the Council to make enquiries and reviewed the material it sent in response.
  2. I sent a copy of my draft decision to Mr X and the Council and I invited them to comment on it.

Back to top

What I found

  1. Mr X has previously complained about the Council in respect of its dealings with him and his son. Mr X’s son is a disabled adult who lives in a full-time care setting. On two previous occasions, the Ombudsman has found fault with the Council’s approach to responding to Mr X’s concerns about his son’s care.
  2. Mr X says the Council is still failing to answer him when he writes. In August 2018, he sent a social worker a list of questions about his son’s care. Some of these related to events more than a year before. Mr X received no response and sent a further email in early September 2018, this time making an information request. This request was acknowledged by the social worker, who said she was sending it on to the Council’s information department.
  3. The council says the social worker who received Mr X’s email in August 2018 decided it should be dealt with as a complaint. This meant it was handed to one of the Council’s complaints officers to investigate and respond to Mr X. The Council believes this was suitable as it says it was clear Mr X was unhappy on several fronts and its complaints department was best placed to respond.
  4. The Council’s records show the complaints officer contacted the social worker twice for information, before writing to Mr X with a response in October 2018.
  5. The Council told the Ombudsman it accepts it took too long to respond to Mr X without updating him. Its complaints policy says responses should be made within 15 working days. Mr X had to wait 29 working days. The Council also says the complaints officer had not applied its policy correctly on how it decides whether to investigate matters over 12 months old. Mr X was told the Council could not investigate events from more than 12 months ago, when in fact it has the discretion to decide.
  6. The Council says it has not yet decided how to respond to Mr X’s information request made in September 2018. It says as Mr X does not have power of attorney or deputyship for his son’s affairs it has concerns about the legality of disclosing information about his son’s care to him. There is no evidence the Council has explained this to Mr X.

Back to top

Analysis

  1. Having read Mr X’s email to the Council in August 2018, I am satisfied it was not fault by the Council to treat it as a complaint. However, the failure to tell him that was happening, and therefore give him an opportunity to respond, was fault.
  2. Once the Council started considering Mr X’s email as a complaint, it did not update him and took significantly longer than its policy says it should to send him a response. This was also fault. Then, the complaints officer wrongly applied the Council’s policy on matters over 12 months old. This meant some of Mr X’s points were dismissed without further explanation.
  3. I have taken into account this is not the first complaint Mr X has made about the Council. He told me his repeat contact comes about because he is dissatisfied with the answers he receives. I can see his concerns are largely based on past events involving his son’s care. The Council needs to decide how to best explain to Mr X what it can and cannot achieve for him. It is possible it is not the body responsible for some of the events he is complaining about – if that is the case, it should tell Mr X who it thinks was responsible instead.
  4. Having found fault with the Council’s actions, I have also concluded it caused Mr X a significant injustice. His frustration at the Council’s handling of his complaint and information request is clear. It is only once Mr X approached the Ombudsman the Council has accepted it could have dealt with things better. Mr X has been put to the time and trouble of having to escalate his complaint to achieve that outcome.

Back to top

Agreed action

  1. By 26 July 2019, the Council has agreed with my recommendation to:
    • Write to Mr X to apologise for the time it took to respond to his complaint without updating him between August and October 2018. It should also apologise for not correctly explaining how the 12-month rule applies to complaints.
    • Revisit its response to Mr X’s complaint in October 2018 and now correctly apply its 12-month rule to the parts wrongly ruled out previously. It should write to Mr X within its normal complaint timescales with its revised response. In applying the correct definition of the 12-month rule, the Council should not disadvantage Mr X by taking into account the time taken since the rule was misapplied.
    • Write to Mr X to confirm its current position on his information request and remind him of his right to approach the Information Commissioner’s Office if he disagrees.
  2. The Council should write to the Ombudsman to confirm when it has completed these actions.

Back to top

Final decision

  1. There was fault by the Council in how it handled an email from Mr X listing questions he wanted answering. Although treating it as a complaint was acceptable, it then took too long to respond and misapplied its own rule about complaints on matters over 12 months old. This caused Mr X an injustice in the form of frustration.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

Print this page

LGO logogram

Review your privacy settings

Required cookies

These cookies enable the website to function properly. You can only disable these by changing your browser preferences, but this will affect how the website performs.

View required cookies

Analytical cookies

Google Analytics cookies help us improve the performance of the website by understanding how visitors use the site.
We recommend you set these 'ON'.

View analytical cookies

In using Google Analytics, we do not collect or store personal information that could identify you (for example your name or address). We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data. Google has developed a tool to help you opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Privacy settings