Summary: We will not investigate this late complaint about the Council’s involvement in three of Ms X’s family member’s cases. It concerns historical matters that we could not fairly investigate now.

The complaint

1. Ms X complained about the Council's involvement in the cases of three of her family members who died. She said despite her having become aware of new information relating to their cases, the Council had refused to investigate the matter further citing the complaint being late. The points Ms X said she became aware about within more recent years were that the Council:
• wrongly recorded at the time of events that she lacked capacity, was mentally ill and a safeguarding risk to her family;
• wrongly shared this information forward to other services and never told her it had done so;
• did not properly assess her father's best interests and failed to involve him in decisions; and
• failed to provide her access to information she requested.
2. Ms X says the events caused significant trauma and she has been discriminated against by other services due to the information they received from the Council. She wanted information about her rectified to enable her to clear her name, information to be provided, and the events to be subject to Safeguarding Adult Reviews.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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)
4. The Information Commissioner's Office considers complaints about freedom of information. Its decision notices may be appealed to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). So where we receive complaints about freedom of information, we normally consider it reasonable to expect the person to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.
5. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Ms X’s complaint concerns events of 2015 to 2017. It is clear from the information provided that she was raising some concerns at those times relating to how her family members’ cases had been handled. We no longer would have information about any complaints she brought to us at that time, because of our data retention policies. She has brought other related, but separable, complaints to us in the years between then and now.
9. The current complaint is about information Ms X says she found out more recently. However, had we decided to investigate a complaint into her family members’ cases at the time, we could have decided what information to gather as necessary. We do not require people to go on a fact-finding mission before bringing complaints to us. Ms X knew enough to bring a complaint several years sooner.
10. The more time that passes, the less likely we are to be able to come to sound conclusions and achieve meaningful outcomes. I have considered the circumstances, including that Ms X was grieving, however there is not a good reason for seven years’ delay in bringing the substantive matters to us.
11. In addition to this, Ms X raised these particular complaints with the Council in mid-2022 and received its response in December 2022. She did not then bring this complaint to the Ombudsman until August 2024. Even if we decided Ms X only found out about the necessary information in 2021 and 2022, this complaint is still late and there is not a good reason for this delay.
12. Ms X’s complaint includes concerns about how the Council treated Ms X’s data and her requests for information. The Information Commissioner is best placed to consider those matters.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because it is about historical matters, which we could not fairly investigate now.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman