Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the adequacy of Council’s offer to settle a complaint after mediation. The complaint is late and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to consider these matters now.

The complaint

1. Mrs X said the Council’s financial settlement offer in a dispute about payments was inadequate and its response to her complaint about this was inadequate. She says the Council has now set her an unreasonable deadline to accept the offer.

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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)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. Mrs X approached us, and we decided in 2020 that ongoing mediation with the Council offered the best route forward. The Council made a financial settlement offer in April 2021. Mrs X has challenged that since. The deadline about which she complains relates to an offer that is now four years old.
7. Mrs X could reasonably have returned to us in 2021 if she was dissatisfied with the offer. The evidence she has sent us show it was clear by the end of that year that the Council had not met her desired outcome. She was able to take other action in the intervening time, so she could have approached us.
8. The matter at the centre of the complaint concerns events from 2020 or significantly earlier. Even if Mrs X had been unable to approach us sooner, we would still be unlikely to investigate those matters robustly due to the likely changes of staff and the effect of the passage of time on the accounts of those involved.
9. The additional matters post-2021 she referred to in her complaint, including how the Council has dealt with her recent complaint about this matter, are all ancillary to her longstanding disagreement with the Council’s offer of April 2021.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because it is late and there is no good reason to exercise discretion to consider these matters now.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman