Warrington Council (19 008 232)
Category : Adult care services > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 17 Oct 2019
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s influence over his girlfriend. The alleged fault has not directly caused the claimed injustice.
The complaint
- The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, says the Council has prevented him from seeing his girlfriend.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:
- the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
- we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered the information Mr X provided with his complaint which included the Council’s reply. Mr X had an opportunity to comment on a draft version of this decision.
What I found
- Mr X says the Council’s employees are intimidating his girlfriend to stop her seeing him. Mr X says his girlfriend is not able to complain without his help.
- Mr X provided the Council’s reply to his complaint. The Council says it is not providing Mr X with any service connected to this. It says his girlfriend has discretion over her contact with Mr X and it is her choice.
Analysis
- We will not normally investigate a complaint unless there is good reason to believe that Mr X suffered significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the service provider. Here that is not the case.
Final decision
- The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council’s actions have not directly affected his contact with his girlfriend.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman