West Sussex County Council (25 021 062)
Category : Children's care services > Child protection
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 17 Jun 2026
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s preparation of a court ordered report about his child. The law says we cannot consider complaints about reports prepared for court. We have no discretion to do so.
The complaint
- Mr X complains the Council produced an inaccurate court report after it did not properly consider his concerns about his child in the care of their other parent. Mr X also complains the Council has communicated and managed his complaint poorly.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes limits on what we can investigate.
- 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)
- 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)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- We cannot investigate this complaint. The law prevents us from investigating complaints about the preparation and content of a court ordered report.
- Mr X also complains of poor communication and complaint handling. We will not look into this part of Mr X’s complaint because it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint handling when we are not looking at the substantive issues.
Final decision
- We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint because it lies outside our jurisdiction and the law says we cannot consider it.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman