Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the content of a report considered by a Child Protection Conference. This is because our intervention would achieve nothing significant.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains that the Council’s officers provided a report to the Chair of a Child Protection Conference containing false information and defamatory allegations.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect 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 an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mrs X says Council officers submitted a report for consideration at a Child Protection Conference (CPC) concerning her child. She complains that the report is flawed, in that it includes false information and allegations she regards as defamatory. She says the report was shared with the CPC’s participants, causing her and her husband significant distress.
6. Mrs X and her husband made a complaint to the Council which has competed the Council’s complaint procedure. While the Council upheld the complaint in part, it substantially rejected Mr and Mrs X’s criticisms of the report to the CPC. Mrs X does not accept the Council’s response.
7. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because investigation would not achieve anything significant. It would not be for us to comment on the disputed contents of the report insofar as they reflect the professional judgement of the officers who wrote it. Where the issue is the accuracy or otherwise of the report, the most the Ombudsman would normally seek is that a record of a complainant’s dissenting views be added to the file. Mrs X’s views are set out in the complaint correspondence, so this has been achieved.
8. If Mrs X believes the report contains false information about her, she may wish to pursue her right to rectification under data protection law. It is open to her to approach the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is better placed than the Ombudsman to consider such matters. We can take no view on whether anything in the report amounts to defamation. Only the courts can do so.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because we would achieve nothing significant by doing so.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman