Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about children services actions more than 20 years ago. There are no good reasons the late complaint rule should not apply.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, complains about the Council’s involvement in his child’s care.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information Mr X provided with his complaint. I considered Mr X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

5. Mr X says that more than 20 years ago, the Council were involved in a Court case about his child’s care. He says the Council lied to his solicitor and the Court. Mr X says the Council abused its power.
6. We cannot investigate a complaint about events Mr X knew about for more than 12 months without good reasons. Here there are not because I am not satisfied:
• there is a realistic prospect of reaching a sound, fair, and meaningful decision, and,
• Mr X could not reasonably be expected to have complained sooner.
7. This is because:
1. The events are more than 20 years old. The further away in time an investigation takes place from the events to be investigated, the more difficult it is to find out the material facts with reasonable confidence. Given the age of this complaint we are less likely to be able to gather enough evidence to reach a sound judgement.
2. It will be difficult to achieve a meaningful remedy. This is because of the time that has already passed, the difficulty in proving causality over longer time periods, and changes in the parties’ situations.
3. The complaint involves Court proceedings. We cannot investigate the content or preparation of Court reports, nor any information the Council gave the Court. We cannot investigate any issues the Court decided.

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Final decision

8. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because there are no good reasons the late complaint rule should not apply.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman