Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about a child protection investigation in 2016. The Council’s final complaint reply was in January 2019 and there are no good reasons why the late complaint rule should not apply.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, complains about a child protection investigation in 2016.

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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)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information Mr X provided with his complaint and the Council’s replies which it partly provided. I considered Mr X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

4. In 2016, Mr X complained to the Council about various children services issues. This centred around the support the Council provided the family, its investigations and assessment.
5. The law sets out a three stage procedure for councils to follow when looking at complaints about children’s social care services. At stage 2 of this procedure, the Council appoints an Investigating Officer and an Independent Person (who is responsible for overseeing the investigation). If a complainant is unhappy with the outcome of the stage 2 investigation, they can ask for a stage 3 review. If a council has investigated something under this procedure, the Ombudsman would not normally re-investigate it unless he considers that investigation was flawed. However, he may look at whether a council properly considered the findings and recommendations of the independent investigation.
6. The Council considered Mr X’s complaint within this procedure. The stage 3 review panel met in January 2019. Mr X was unhappy with this and complained to us in July 2020. He says the issue which remains outstanding from that complaints procedure, and which he disagrees with the finding on, is the decision to have a child protection investigation, called as section 47 investigation, and its subsequent report. The stage 3 confirmed that it could not uphold Mr X’s complaint the section 47 investigation was not justified.
7. We will not investigate a complaint about events known to Mr X for more than 12 months without good reasons. Here there are not:
• The events which form the complaint are from 2016.
• It has been 16 months between the Council’s final reply to Mr X’s complaint and him complaining to us that he remained unhappy.
• It is unlikely we could obtain different evidence to that the Council’s complaints procedure found.

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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