Summary: Mrs X complained about the Council’s children’s services involvement between 2012 and 2018. We will not investigate this late complaint, because there is not a good reason Mrs X did not complain to us sooner, providing the necessary consent. We have also already considered parts of the complaint, and other parts relate to court proceedings which the law does not allow us to consider.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complained about the Council's children's services involvement between 2012 and 2018. Her complaints include the Council:
• Illegally carried out an assessment without her knowledge or consent to request funding from the Adoption Support Fund;
• Wrongly told her it had submitted an application when it had not;
• Did not tell her therapy could not begin for her son, which was because the assessor had said the therapy would not be sufficient;
• Has been obstructive and defensive; and
• Refused to consider the complaint due to it being historical and due to needing consent from her son.
2. Mrs X says the issues have caused significant distress for her and her son.

Back to top

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. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)
5. We may investigate complaints made on behalf of someone else if they have given their consent. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26A(1), as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

6. I considered the information Mrs X provided when she complained to us.
7. I considered the information held for previous complaints we received from Mrs X.
8. I considered Mrs X’s comments on my draft decision.

Back to top

What I found

9. We investigated a complaint from Mrs X and issued a final decision in 2012.
10. Mrs X complained to us in 2018 about events that had taken place since our previous involvement. We explained to Mrs X in 2018 “You have told me that your son believes there is no point in making a complaint. In this case, we do not have his consent for you to complain on his behalf or to share his data, and we are therefore unable to look at the complaint”. There is no evidence Mrs X challenged this statement or sought to provide us with her son’s consent, although Mrs X now says we did not send her a consent form for her son to sign at that time.
11. If Mrs X was not happy with our decision to close the case in 2018, this is a concern she should have raised then. It is now too late for us to reconsider our actions or decision of 2018, and that decision still stands.
12. We explained to Mrs X in 2018 that even if we did have her son’s consent, we would not investigate the complaint for other reasons. These were:
• “The substantive issue was previously considered and decided. We do not reconsider previously decided complaints”.
• “We cannot look at anything relating to, flowing to or from court proceedings or that you wanted the court to consider. All such matters, not just the court decisions, are out of our jurisdiction”.
• “The law says that we cannot investigate matters known to the complainant more than 12 months previously, unless there are exceptional reasons to exercise discretion”.
• “Although you feel that the LGSCO has looked at a case you regard as similar, and you would like us to provide scrutiny of the Council's actions in all comparable cases, this is not our role. We are not a regulator, but take each case on its own merits. In deciding whether we could or should investigate, we have to consider our jurisdiction, and whether we are likely to find fault causing individual injustice that we can remedy”.
13. Mrs X complained again in 2020, and returned a consent form signed by her son when we requested this. Mrs X provided evidence of a complaint response from the Council from 2018. I asked Mrs X to clarify whether her complaint was about events since 2018, or whether it was only about the same issues she brought to the Ombudsman previously. Mrs X did not respond to the question or provide any information to suggest there have been more recent events. This complaint is not different to the complaint Mrs X brought to the Ombudsman in 2018, and for the reasons explained to Mrs X in 2018, we will not investigate it.

Back to top

Final decision

14. The Ombudsman will not and cannot investigate this late complaint. This is because there is not a good reason Mrs X did not complain to us sooner, providing the necessary consent. We have also already considered parts of the complaint, and other parts relate to court proceedings which the law does not allow us to consider.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman