Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council's handling of a safeguarding referral. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council's safeguarding decision-making. The Council has already acknowledged and apologised for the faults it identified. The Information Commissioner's Office is better placed to consider the remaining data protection concerns.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council wrongly decided to carry out a child in need assessment under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 rather than section 47 child protection enquiries. He also complains about the Council's information sharing, record keeping, complaint handling and its handling of his personal data.

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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 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

3. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
5. We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Mr X says the Council wrongly decided to carry out a child in need assessment under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 rather than section 47 child protection enquiries. He also complains about the Council's information sharing, record keeping, complaint handling and its handling of his personal data.
9. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body for safeguarding decision. This means we do not take a second look at the Council’s decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at whether there was fault in how the Council made its decision.
10. We are unlikely to find fault in the Council's decision to proceed under section 17. The evidence shows the Council considered the referral from the National Crime Agency, gathered information from relevant agencies, assessed the level of risk and recorded its reasons for progressing the matter to a social work assessment. The records show the Council noted there were no immediate welfare concerns for the children and no emergency action was required.
11. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council's handling of a safeguarding referral. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making process to justify further investigation.
12. The Council has already accepted fault in part. It acknowledged it incorrectly referred to the lawful basis for information sharing and apologised for this. It also accepted a subjective comment recorded during the safeguarding process should not have remained on the record and apologised. It said it had taken action to address this. In these circumstances, further investigation by us is unlikely to achieve a different outcome.
13. The remaining concerns relate to data protection, subject access requests and the disclosure of information. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is better placed to consider these matters because it is the specialist body responsible for investigating complaints about the handling of personal data and compliance with data protection legislation. It is reasonable for Mr X to pursue these concerns with the ICO.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Mr X's complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council's handling of the safeguarding referral to justify an investigation. The Council has already acknowledged and apologised for the faults it identified, and further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman