Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s involvement in his children living with extended family for a month. It is unlikely we could find the Council’s actions directly caused the injustice he claims.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, says the Council wrongly took his children into care and failed to provide information to him.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. We cannot investigate a complaint about Action taken by or on behalf of any policing body in connection with the investigation or prevention of crime. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 2,, as amended)
4. The courts have said that where someone has used their right of appeal, reference or review or remedy by way of proceedings in any court of law, the Ombudsman has no jurisdiction to investigate. This is the case even if the appeal did not or could not provide a complete remedy for all the injustice claimed. (R v The Commissioner for Local Administration ex parte PH (1999) EHCA Civ 916)
5. 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, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered the information Mr X provided with his complaint and the section 20 agreement which the Council provided. I considered Mr X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

7. In early January 2021, the Police removed Mr X’s children from their home, and elsewhere, under a Police Protection Order. The Police arrested Mr X but later released him on bail with conditions. Those conditions included for him not to contact directly or indirectly the children.
8. The day the Police Protection Order ended Mr X signed an agreement that the children’s grandparents would care for the children. This agreement is a section 20 agreement which the Children Act provides for. This agreement ended when the Police bail conditions expired and the children returned to their family home.
9. Mr X applied to the Court for an order against the Council for its part in the children not living in their home for that month. The Court refused to list the case. His court claim included the failure to provide information.
10. Mr X complained to the Council. He says it should not have removed his children and should not have prevented him from seeing them. Mr X says the Council did not give him full and proper information when he signed the section 20 agreement. He says he signed it under duress.

Analysis

11. We cannot investigate the Police’s actions. This means we cannot investigate why the children were removed, the decision to remove them and the police’s bail conditions. This includes the Council’s advice to the Police.
12. Given the police bail conditions, Mr X could not have had contact with his children regardless of any Council involvement. Even if the Council had provided Mr X with more information, or acted differently, it would have made no difference to his contact with his children for the month the bail conditions and the section 20 agreement existed.
13. We will not normally investigate a complaint when the injustice the complainant alleges has not been significantly, directly, caused by the Council’s faulty actions.

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Final decision

14. We will not and cannot investigate this complaint. This is because we cannot investigate the Police actions and it is unlikely our investigation could show the Council’s actions caused him to miss out on contact with his children.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman