Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with Mr X’s complaint about its child protection actions concerning his family, which involved court proceedings. The resort to court proceedings means we are legally prevented from investigating the Council’s child protection actions, and a court judgement prevents us investigating the Council’s complaint handling where we are unable to consider the substantive matters complained of.

The complaint

1. Mr X said the Council took too long to deal with his complaint about the actions of social workers. He said his complaint is still ongoing and the Council had failed to do what it agreed in terms of the Ombudsman’s previous recommendations in dealing with the complaint. He said he wanted us to consider the compensation for his children having been asked the same questions repeatedly by different social workers, and for himself for having to go through unnecessary court proceedings.

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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 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)
4. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has started court action about the matter. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
5. We have the power to start or end an investigation into a complaint about actions the law allows us to investigate. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we think the issues could reasonably be, or have been mentioned as part of the legal proceedings regarding a closely related matter. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 24A(6) and 34B(8), as amended, section 34(B))
6. 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))

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered information provided by the complainant.
8. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

9. It has become clear since we considered complaint 22 013 100 that Mr X’s substantive complaint concerns matters that either directly formed part of court action or could reasonably have done so. This is because the Council applied for a court order in respect of one or more of Mr X’s children. A legal bar prevents us investigating these substantive matters and we cannot investigate them.
10. Where becomes clear that the substantive matters in a complaint are beyond our legal powers to consider, we cannot investigate how the Council has dealt with the complaint about them. That applies even when the Council is using the statutory process for children’s complaints.

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Final decision

11. We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint because:

• The substantive matters complained of directly formed part of court action or are closely linked to it; and
• We cannot investigate how the Council dealt with a complaint about a matter where we have no legal discretion to investigate the substantive matter.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman