London Borough of Hackney (19 012 615)
Category : Children's care services > Child protection
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 10 Feb 2021
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council harassing him and his daughter since 2019. There is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
- Mr X said the Council continued to harass him and his daughter by carrying out assessments unnecessarily that were inaccurate.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
- 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 is unlikely we would find fault.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I read Mr X’s complaint and checked complaint correspondence provided by the Council.
What I found
- We issued decision 18 012 653 in 2019 after Mr X complained about the Council’s actions towards him and his daughter. He complained again to the Council about further matters after that. He said it carried out further assessments without need and that these were inaccurate.
- The correspondence shows the Council asked Mr X in March 2020 to clarify his complaint by being more specific, so it could progress it. It says he did not do so and declined to agree the statement of complaint.
- Several points of Mr X’s complaint were not specific. It was reasonable, not obstruction, for the Council to ask Mr X for clarification. Without receiving clarification, the Council’s decision to take no further action was also reasonable.
Final decision
- We will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman