Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Miss X’s time in Council care between 2016 and 2021. While it is understandable that she has not complained sooner, we would be unlikely to be able to conduct a robust investigation or achieve a worthwhile outcome.

The complaint

1. Miss X said the Council failed to safeguard her or to resolve her immigration status while she was in its care between 2016 and 2021. She said this led to her suffering harm. She also said the Council failed to deal with her complaint properly and delayed doing so.

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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:

• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, 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 and the Council.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. Although Miss X knew about the matters she now complains of several years ago, I accept she has had difficulty in complaining to us. Therefore, we should not exclude her complaint simply because she has taken more than 12 months to approach us about matters from her childhood.
8. However, it is clear from the Council’s final response to Miss X’s complaint that any investigation by us would be unlikely to add significantly to the Council’s response or reach a significantly different view. That response gave a rationale for different decisions during Miss X’s time in care. It would not be possible for us to interview the staff involved as many of them are unlikely to remain in post, and recalling the reasoning for decisions taken several years ago is not straightforward. Attempting to Interrogate these decisions, which would ultimately have been matters of professional judgement, is unlikely to lead to a robust outcome.
9. While it is not a good use of resources to investigate complaint handling procedures when we are not able to deal with the matters complained of, I observe that child protection matters are exempt from the statutory complaints process for children’s services, and that time taken by the Council to respond to the complaint is not the reason why we could not now investigate robustly.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because doing so would be unlikely to lead to a worthwhile outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman