Summary: There was no fault in how the Council considered the complainant’s application for a discretionary COVID-19 business restart grant. The Council was at fault because it did not explore the complainant’s requests for reasonable adjustments, but this did not cause him an injustice. It is not the Council’s fault that the various COVID-19 support schemes can be difficult to understand, and it has taken appropriate steps to mitigate this. We have therefore completed our investigation.

The complaint

1. I will refer to the complainant as Mr B.
2. Mr B complains the Council:

• refused his application for a discretionary restart grant, under its local COVID-19 business support scheme, despite originally telling him he was eligible for it, and also taking too long to make its decision;
• failed to make reasonable adjustments to support him; and that
• the wording of the Council’s published support schemes is confusing.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

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’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)
5. This complaint involves events that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Government introduced a range of new and frequently updated rules and guidance during this time. We can consider whether the Council followed the relevant legislation, guidance and our published “Good Administrative Practice during the response to COVID-19”.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I reviewed Mr B’s correspondence with the Council, along with his grant application and the Council’s published grant scheme.
7. I also shared a draft copy of this decision statement with each party for their comments.

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What I found

8. Mr B is employed in providing IT training to people with disabilities. His work is arranged by an agency specialising in this field, but Mr B is a freelancer and thus self-employed.
9. In April 2021, Mr B emailed the Council expressing an interest in its recently-announced discretionary restart grant scheme, and asking for advice on how it would be administered. On 10 May, the Council emailed Mr B, explaining the scheme was now open and inviting applications (this appears to be a generic email sent to those who had registered an interest, and was not specifically in response to Mr B’s email).
10. Mr B emailed the Council again on 12 May to explain he had learning disabilities, and asked it to offer him support to understand the process better. He asked questions about different grant schemes and commented he struggled to understand how they worked.
11. On 14 May, Mr B submitted a stage 1 complaint. He complained he struggled to understand the grant schemes and that he had not received the support he requested.
12. A Council officer called Mr B on 24 May and talked him through the application process for the discretionary restart grant scheme. Mr B then submitted his application. Shortly after this, the officer emailed Mr B to highlight some information he had missed from his application, which Mr B then supplied.
13. On 21 June, Mr B emailed the Council to chase its decision on his application.
14. On 22 June, the Council responded to Mr B’s stage 1 complaint. It apologised he had experienced difficulty with the online application process, and acknowledged some businesses may struggle with it. It said, for this reason, it also operated a telephone appointment service to provide application advice. The Council noted a Council officer had called Mr B and supported him in making his application.
15. The Council also asked Mr B to submit any suggestions he might have for further improvements to its service.
16. Mr B chased the Council’s decision on his application again on 30 June and 1, 14 and 21 July.
17. On 22 July, the Council provided Mr B with a stage 2 complaint response, having treated his email of 1 July as an escalation of his complaint. The Council acknowledged the delay Mr B had experienced and apologised for this, explaining it had a large number of applications to process by a small team. The Council attached a letter giving Mr B its decision on his application, and said it had now completed the Council’s internal complaints process.
18. The attached letter explained it had refused Mr B’s application because it did not meet the Council’s published criteria.
19. Mr B emailed the Council again on 23 July, to complain he had not received the Council’s decision. He explained again he needed the Council to make reasonable adjustments to help him understand the process.
20. Mr B then submitted a complaint to the Ombudsman on 9 September.

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Legislative background

Discretionary grants

21. The government has given councils some funding for discretionary grants to businesses. Councils should have a policy on making these discretionary grants.
22. The guidance gives councils discretion on awarding grants, stating:

“Where limits to funding available for this scheme require local authorities to

prioritise which types of businesses will receive funding, it will be at the local

authorities [sic] discretion as to which types of businesses are most relevant to

their local economy. There will be no penalty for local authorities because of their

use of discretion to prioritise some business types.” (Department for Business,

Energy and Industrial Strategy: Local Authority Discretionary Grants Fund – guidance for local authorities, paragraph 26)

Reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities

23. The reasonable adjustment duty is set out in the Equality Act 2010 and applies to any organisation which carries out a public function. Organisations are under a positive and proactive duty to take steps to remove or prevent obstacles to accessing their service. If an adjustment is reasonable, the organisation must make it.
24. The duty is ‘anticipatory’. This means service providers cannot wait until a disabled person wants to use their services, but must think in advance about what disabled people with a range of impairments might reasonably need.

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Analysis

25. I will address each point of Mr B’s complaint in turn.

The Council’s refusal of a discretionary restart grant

26. I asked the Council to explain why it refused Mr B’s application for a discretionary restart grant. In response, it said it was because he did not fit into any of the scheme’s eligibility categories.
27. The Council has provided me with a copy of the published scheme, along with a copy of Mr B’s application. The scheme says:

“The North Northamptonshire Discretionary Restart Scheme is designed for the following business who are not eligible for the mandatory Restart Scheme as their business does not have a rateable value (EV). This includes the following sectors:

• Non Essential Retail
• Hospitality
• Leisure
• Accommodation
• Gyms & Sports
• Personal Care”

28. In Mr B’s application form, he gave the following description for his business:

“Offer 1:1 face 2 face and online coaching, training and mentoring for adults with physical, mental and emotional needs. Specifically around IT needs via teaching Assisted Technology. Unable to offer f2f which is 60% of the business. Many FE and HE and PG students in management for the Hospitality, Leisure and Retail management sectors.”

29. Elsewhere on the application form, Mr B described his business as falling into the ‘hospitality’ category.
30. I am conscious the eligible business categories listed in the Council’s scheme is not exhaustive. However, I am satisfied Mr B’s work – the provision of training – cannot reasonably be considered to be one of the business types the scheme was designed to cater for. The fact some of Mr B’s students work in the hospitality sector does not mean Mr B’s business in part of that sector.
31. This being the case, I do not consider there is any question of fault in the Council’s decision to refuse Mr B’s grant application.
32. Mr B also complained about the length of time the Council took to make its decision. He says he was originally told this would take ‘2-3 weeks’, but in the end it was approximately two months before he received the Council’s decision. I note the Council accepted there had been some delay and apologised for it.
33. There was no statutory deadline for the Council to make a decision on this type of application. Although it appears clear the Council took longer than it had anticipated, I accept its explanation for this, which was that it had a large volume of applications to consider with limited resources. This being the case, I do not consider two months to be manifestly excessive, to the point it amounts to fault.
34. I also note Mr B says the Council officer who helped him complete the form told him he was eligible for the scheme. He considers the Council should pay him the grant because it misled him in this respect.
35. I was not party to Mr B’s phone call with the officer, and there is no recording or other objective contemporaneous record of it. I therefore cannot draw my own conclusions on what the officer said to Mr B. It is possible the officer mistakenly believed Mr B would be eligible, when he was not, and told him this; alternatively, it is possible Mr B misunderstood something the officer had said to mean he would be eligible. Without objective evidence, I cannot make a finding on this.
36. Even if I could confirm what Mr B alleges, however, I would not recommend the Council pay him the grant money. This would not be a proportionate remedy for the injustice such a fault had caused.
37. I find no fault in this element of Mr B’s complaint.

The Council’s failure to make reasonable adjustments

38. Mr B first contacted the Council about the grant scheme in April, to register his interest, but did not request any adjustments be made at that time. The Council responded with a generic email on 10 May, to confirm the scheme was now open, and Mr B replied on 12 May explaining he needed assistance. He then submitted a formal complaint about the Council’s failure to respond to this on 14 May.
39. I am not persuaded this represents fault by the Council. Although Mr B mentioned his disabilities, and asked for reasonable adjustments to be made, on 12 May, he did not specify what kind of support or assistance he needed. He then waited only two days before complaining the Council had failed to respond to his request.
40. It is not clear whether the Council’s call to Mr B on 24 May was prompted by his complaint, or whether it had decided to make this call after Mr B requested assistance on 12 May. Either way, it appears clear the call addressed Mr B’s difficulties, as he was then able to submit his application and did not report any further problems.
41. Mr B then sent a series of emails to the Council, chasing its decision on his application. In two of these, he again mentioned that he needed the Council to make reasonable adjustments, on 21 and 23 July respectively.
42. I cannot see any form of response from the Council to address these requests. I am again conscious Mr B did not make request any specific type of adjustment or support in his emails; but the Council should have taken the time to explore this with him, and then consider what adjustments it could reasonably make. That it did not do so is fault.
43. However, I am not persuaded this caused Mr B a significant injustice. Critically, the substantive reason for Mr B’s contact with the Council – to chase its decision on his application – was resolved on 22 July anyway, in between his two ‘reasonable adjustment’ emails, when the Council gave him its decision. And, again, without any indication what adjustment Mr B had wished the Council to make, it is not possible for me to say he was prevented from fully accessing the Council’s service.
44. I find fault which did not cause injustice in this element of Mr B’s complaint.

The Council’s published grant scheme information is confusing

45. The Council has accepted some people may find it difficult to understand how the different grant schemes work, but says it telephone appointment service is designed to help and support potential applicants under such circumstances.
46. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government has launched a wide range of different schemes to provide financial support to individuals and businesses. It has asked local authorities to administer many of these schemes, and in some cases, given them wide discretion in how to use the funding it has provided.
47. Unfortunately this has created a very complex situation for potential applicants. For instance, it may often not be immediately obvious whether they are eligible for a particular scheme, and they may find different local authorities are administering what appears to be the same scheme in a very different way.
48. I therefore appreciate entirely why Mr B found it difficult to navigate the information the Council published about the schemes. However, I do not consider this is something which I could reasonably describe as fault by the Council, as it appears to be an inevitable consequence of having so many different schemes running over a short period of time.
49. And I consider the Council’s system, of offering phone calls to support potential applicants, to be good practice in helping to mitigate these difficulties. Again, it appears clear this proved useful to Mr B in supporting him to make his application, notwithstanding the fact it was not successful.
50. I find no fault in this element of Mr B’s complaint.

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Final decision

51. I have completed my investigation with a finding of fault which did not cause injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman