Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council (19 003 225)

Category : Children's care services > Child protection

Decision : Closed after initial enquiries

Decision date : 15 Jul 2019

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint about a referral to Children’s Services and the Council’s handling of a complaint under the Children Act complaints procedure until the complaint has been considered by a review panel.

The complaint

  1. The complainant, whom I shall call Ms M, complains about the way the Council has handled her complaint about a referral to Children’s Services.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

  1. 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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe it would be reasonable for the person to wait for the outcome of a review or appeal.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

  1. I considered information supplied by Ms M. I also considered the Council’s responses to her complaints at stage 1 and 2 of the complaint procedure.

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What I found

  1. In May 2018 a referral was made to the Council about the welfare of Ms M’s son, S. The Council responded to the referral and, having made initial enquiries, decided two days later that the allegations were unsubstantiated.
  2. Ms M complained shortly after this about the Council’s handling of the referral and the Council responded fairly quickly under stage 1 of the statutory Children Act complaint procedure. This is a three stage procedure. Stage 1 is a preliminary response by the Council with the emphasis, where possible, on resolution of the complaint. Stage 2 involves an investigation by someone independent of the case and overseen by an independent person. Stage 3 involves a hearing by an independent review panel.
  3. There are timescales set out for each stage of the procedure:
  • 10 working days (20 days in exceptional circumstances) at Stage 1
  • 25 working days (65 days in exceptional circumstances)
  • The complainant has 20 days after receiving the Council’s response to request a review panel
  • The panel should then be convened within 30 days.
  1. It should therefore be possible to complete the whole process in around three months – even if the case is complex.
  2. Not all of the Council’s functions under the Children Act 1989 are covered by the statutory procedure but, once the Council has started that procedure, it needs to continue considering the complaint under it.
  3. In this case, the whole procedure has so far taken over a year. The Council has now organised a review panel meeting for the end of August.
  4. However, notwithstanding this apparent delay, in my view, there would be no advantage to Ms M in us considering this complaint further until the review panel has convened. The panel may be able to provide her with a resolution without the need for a further investigation and will be able to consider some areas of Ms M’s complaint which may be out of jurisdiction for us.
  5. At the same time, I will ask the Council to consider whether it needs to provide some kind of remedy for Ms M for the impact on her on any avoidable delay in the complaint procedure.
  6. Should Ms M remain unsatisfied after the review panel has considered her complaint, she can complain again to us and we will consider at that stage whether we can or should investigate. At that stage we can also consider the impact of any unnecessary delay in the complaint procedure.

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Final decision

  1. I have decided that the Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint yet to allow the issues to be considered by a review panel.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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