Kingston Upon Hull City Council (19 010 528)
Category : Children's care services > Child protection
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 03 Jan 2020
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council producing inaccurate minutes. It is unlikely we would achieve a significantly different outcome than the Council provided of placing her comments with the minutes.
The complaint
- The complainant, whom I shall call Mrs X, says the Council produced inaccurate minutes of a meeting and delayed in replying to her complaint.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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:
- the injustice is not significant enough to justify the cost of our involvement, or
- it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
- it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered the information Mrs X provided with her complaint and the Council’s replies to her. Mrs X had the opportunity to comment on a draft version of this decision.
What I found
- Mrs X complained to the Council in May 2019 that it had produced inaccurate minutes for a children services meeting in March 2019. The Council replied in July and then in October 2019. It agreed to place Mrs X’s complaint letters, which set out the errors she claims, next to the minutes. It apologised for the delay in replying to her complaint.
Analysis
- It we were to investigate, it is unlikely we would achieve a significantly different result than already provided. Placing the claimed mistakes next to the minutes is the remedy for inaccurate minutes which we usually consider acceptable.
- It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.
Final decision
- The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is unlikely we could achieve a significantly different result.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman