Summary: We will not investigate this late complaint about the Council’s failure to safeguard Mrs Y’s adult son. The law says complaints must be brought to us within 12 months of becoming aware of the matter, unless there is good reason for delay.

The complaint

1. Mr Z complained the Council failed to act on his mother’s (Mrs X’s) concerns about his brother’s (Mr Y’s) self-neglect in 2020. He says this led to Mr Y’s death. Mr Z says the matter has caused significant distress for the family. They want the Council to accept it was at fault and caused Mr Y’s death.

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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)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mr Z’s complaint is about events of 2020. He says Mrs Y raised concerns with the Council about Mr Y’s self-neglect, but the Council did not take steps to give Mr Y the support the family felt he needed. Mr Y passed away at the end of 2020.
6. The more time that passes between events and the matter being brought to our attention, the less likely we are to be able to come to sound conclusions. This is because the passage of time means evidence may become lost, officers move away from their employment and people’s recollections become less reliable. The law therefore says complaints should be brought to us within 12 months of becoming aware of the matter. We can decide to investigate late complaints if there is good reason for the delay and if we believe we could come to sound conclusions.
7. Three years passed following Mr Y’s death, before the complaint was brought to the Ombudsman. There were no investigation processes, for example coroner’s inquests, which would serve to delay matters, nor were there any particular mitigating circumstances outside of the complainants’ control which would justify using discretion in this case to investigate the matter. I have carefully considered the significant distress Mrs Y experienced, which Mr Z explained still has a great impact on her ability to go about her day-to-day life. However, it is not unusual for people to complain to us at times of grief, and I am not satisfied this explains the whole period of delay.
8. In any event, were we to exercise discretion in this regard, we could never say the Council’s actions were responsible for Mr Y’s death. We may therefore not have been able to achieve a meaningful outcome for the complainants even if we did investigate the complaint.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Mr Z’s late complaint because there is not a good reason for the delay in the matter being brought to the Ombudsman.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman