Summary: Mr B complains about the Council’s involvement in a false diagnosis he received from a consultant. The Ombudsman will not investigate the complaint because the matter complained about happened too long in the past to be investigated now and so falls outside our jurisdiction.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to as Mr B, says the Council was involved in asking a consultant to provide a false medical diagnosis for him and that it has refused his request to comment on the matter. Mr B also says he has not been replied to by a social worker within the last four years and has been told recently he is not on the Council’s records.

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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’. 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:

• it is unlikely we would find fault, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or
• there is another body better placed to consider this complaint, or
• it would be reasonable for the person to ask for a council review or appeal.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. In considering the complaint I reviewed the information provided by Mr B and gave him the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

5. In March 2020 Mr B contacted the Ombudsman to complain about the Council’s involvement in what he says was a “bogus” diagnosis he received from a consultant and added that he has not received a response from a social worker for four years and the Council has no record of him.
6. To support his complaint Mr B sent in numerous documents and letters which focus primarily on complaints he has raised over a number of years with the Royal Mail, the police and the NHS.
7. Within the documentation he has provided is mention of a letter from him to the Council that a friend hand delivered to the Council in August 2018 and it appears Mr B did not receive a reply to this letter.
8. More recently Mr B has been told by both national and local Healthwatch services about the process involved if he wants to make a complaint about his Local Healthwatch service. The process requires a complaint first to be made to the local service, with the right to escalate the complaint first to the local authority concerned and then, only when this authority’s complaints procedure has been exhausted, to us.

Assessment

9. The complaints Mr B has against the Royal Mail, the Police and the NHS fall outside our jurisdiction and cannot be investigated by the Ombudsman. There are other bodies which will deal with these complaints, including the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman who Mr B has already contacted.
10. As the restriction at paragraph 2 of this statement sets out, the matters covered in Mr B’s 2018 hand delivered letter, and the four year delay he refers to, happened too long ago to be investigated by the Ombudsman now and I see no grounds which warrant exercising discretion to do so.
11. If Mr B has a current complaint, unrelated to the matters mentioned above, then he can make a formal written complaint directly to the Council about this. If, at the end of the Council’s own complaints procedure, he remains dissatisfied with the response he receives he can complain again to us and we will consider any new complaint made.

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Final decision

12. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the matter complained about happened too long in the past to be investigated now and so falls outside our jurisdiction.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman