Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council allegedly failing to correct a spelling error on Miss X’s birth certificate when it took her into care. This matter is late, and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to consider it now. There is not enough potential injustice from the alleged recent comment by a Council officer to warrant our further involvement.

The complaint

1. Miss X said the Council failed to correct an error on her birth certificate when it took her into care as a child. She said this has led to many problems in later life. She said an officer said she might be lying when she complained about this recently. She wanted the Council to apologise for both matters.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. 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)
4. We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide:

• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. The Council took Miss X into care more than 25 years ago and she has been an adult for more than 20 years. Birth certificates are foundational identity documents that are used to obtain other identity documents such as passports and driving licences. They are still needed to establish identity where a person has no other form of accepted identification, such as when starting a job. It is thus likely that Miss X discovered the misspelling of her name by early adulthood and could have complained about it much sooner.
8. Given we will not investigate the first matter, the alleged comment by a Council officer would not create sufficient injustice on its own for us to investigate.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because:

• The matter of the birth certificate is late, and there is no good reason to exercise the discretion available to consider it now; and
• There is not enough potential injustice in the matter of the alleged comment alone to warrant investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman