Surrey County Council (20 006 397)
Category : Children's care services > Child protection
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 01 Dec 2020
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Ms X complaints about the child protection the Council gave her as a child. The events are over 20 years old and there are no good reasons the late complaint rule should not apply.
The complaint
- The complainant, whom I shall call Ms X, says the Council failed to protect her from harm while a child.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered the information Ms X provided with her complaint and the Council’s reply to her which it provided. I considered Ms X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.
What I found
- Ms X says she was born in 1990. She says the Council’s social services team were involved with her family due to the quality of her mother’s parenting. She says the Council removed her from her mother’s care in 1997. She says the Council should have done so years before. She says in failing to do so, she was exposed to harm for longer than she should have been.
- Ms X complained to the Council this year. It said the events were too old. It advised her to seek legal advice.
- We can only investigate a complaint about events known to the complainant for more than 12 months if there are good reasons to do so. Here there are not because:
- I am not confident there is a realistic prospect of reaching a sound, fair, and meaningful decision. Given the time elapsed it will be more difficult to find out the material facts with reasonable confidence and we are less likely to be able to gather enough evidence to reach a sound judgement.
- I am not satisfied that Ms X could not reasonably be expected to have complained sooner.
Final decision
- The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because there are no good reasons why the late complaint rule should not apply.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman