Summary: We have discontinued our investigation into Miss B’s complaint about the Council’s children’s services department in the 1990s. There is nothing we could achieve which would make things better for Miss B or for other people in the same situation.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Miss B, complains that the Council failed to protect her from abuse when she was a child living with her father in the 1990s.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Miss B. She and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

4. The Ombudsman is an administrative review body. We investigate complaints about how councils have acted and, if we decide someone suffered because of a council’s faults, we will recommend how it should put things right for them.
5. The Council refused to investigate Miss B’s complaint because the issues she complains about happened so long ago. It said there would be no staff members left to speak to about her case, and it would not expect case recordings from 30 years ago to meet the standards they do today. An Ombudsman investigation would face the same challenges.
6. Furthermore, there is nothing which could be achieved by an Ombudsman investigation which would make things better for Miss B or for other people in the same situation. The Council’s procedures will have changed – several times – since then, as has government child protection guidance. The staff members involved no longer work for the Council. Staff training and inter-agency communication will almost certainly have improved in response to several national serious case reviews. And the Council could not bring the perpetrator to justice, even if the Police and courts had not already succeeded in doing so.
7. Miss B says she is not seeking compensation, as her primary focus is on service improvements. Even if she were, the Ombudsman says in our remedy guidance that “our remedies are not intended to be punitive and we do not award compensation in the way that a court might”. This is because we cannot properly decide the monetary value which should be placed on the distress someone has suffered. Only a court can do this.
8. This means there are no useful outcomes we could achieve if we continued to investigate Miss B’s complaint, and I will discontinue my investigation.

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Final decision

9. I have discontinued my investigation into Miss B’s complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman