Hampshire County Council (21 013 943)
Category : Children's care services > Child protection
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 20 Jan 2022
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about this Council’s alleged failure to safeguard the complainant’s son because it is late and there are no grounds to consider it now.
The complaint
- The complainant, who I will refer to as Mr B complains that the Council failed to act on his concerns about his son’s welfare while in the care of his mother.
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)
- 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)
- The Courts have said that we cannot investigate a complaint about any action by a council, concerning a matter which is itself out of our jurisdiction. (R (on the application of M) v Commissioner for Local Administration [2006] EHWCC 2847 (Admin))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mr B’s son lives with him. He says his son’s mother has unsupervised access to him. Mr B complains that the actions of the Council since 2017 have led to the current situation, where he does not know whether his son is safe when in his mother’s care. He has also expressed concerns about other children in his son’s mother’s household.
- The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr B’s complaint because it is late. Late complaints are when a complainant takes more than 12 months to come to us. This applies to the events Mr B complained to the Council about and there are no grounds for us to investigate them now.
- It is also the case that arrangements for contact between Mr B’s son and his mother have been considered in court. This places them, and matters relating to them, outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. If Mr B wishes to change contact arrangements he must go back to court. We cannot intervene.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr B’s complaint because it is late and there are no grounds for us to consider it now.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman