Salford City Council (25 022 033)
Category : Children's care services > Child protection
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 28 May 2026
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint about information the Council’s children’s services omitted from a court report. The law prevents us from investigating matters that are or have been the subject of court proceedings.
The complaint
- Mr X complained about the Council’s children’s services involvement with his family, before family court proceedings. Mr X said the Council failed to include relevant evidence in its report provided to court and did not consider his views.
- Mr X also complained the Council failed to consider his complaint.
- Mr X said the matters directly impacted the outcome of court proceedings.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions 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)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mr X said the Council failed to consider or include relevant evidence in a report it presented to court. This included previous court judgements and police information. Mr X also said it failed to consider his views and therefore the report was biased.
- Mr X said this directly impacted the outcome of the court proceedings.
- As outlined in paragraph five, we cannot investigate matters related to court action. Mr should have raised his concerns to the court, or to his legal representatives to raise them on his behalf.
- As we cannot investigate the substantive matters of the complaint, we will not investigate the Council’s handling of the complaint because it is not proportionate to do so.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because the law prevents us from investigating matters that are or have been the subject of court proceedings.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman