Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council handled Mr X’s complaint. This is because we cannot consider Mr X’s substantive complaint without consent from his grandson and Mr X has not been caused an injustice as a result of the Council’s handling of his complaint.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council did not properly investigate his complaint about how it responded to concerns he had raised about his grandson.
2. Mr X says this has caused the family significant distress and put them to unnecessary time and trouble.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. We cannot investigate any matters relating to Mr X’s grandson as we do not have his grandson’s consent for Mr X to act on his behalf. Mr X says he only wants us to consider the way the Council dealt with his complaint.
7. We could not carry out an effective investigation into the Council’s complaint handling without considering the matter complained off. As we do not have Mr X’s grandson’s consent for Mr X to act on his behalf we can only consider marginal issues relating to complaint handling such as delay.
8. There was a delay in the Council responding to Mr X’s complaint but this has not, on it’s own, caused Mr X a significant injustice that would warrant investigation. Mr X has raised other issues with the way the Council dealt with the complaint but we would not be able to consider some of these without considering the substantive matter and other issues do not, on their own, cause Mr X an injustice that warrants investigation. Therefore we will not investigate this complaint.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because he has not been caused a significant injustice as a result of the Council’s actions.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman