Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with Ms X’s complaint about foster care arrangements. This is because there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by doing so.

The complaint

1. Ms X says the Council has not properly followed its complaints handling process when dealing with her complaint.
2. Ms X says as a result, the Council has not made payments she believes are due to her and have caused her stress.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

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)

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 no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

4. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

7. Ms X complained to the Council in October 2025 for issued beginning in 2024. The Council issued its final response in the matter in January 2026, and Ms X brought her matter to the Ombudsman a few days later.
8. We will not investigate a complaint about complaint handling where we are not considering the substantive issues.
9. Many of the issues Ms X complained to the Council about happened earlier than January 2025, and so they are late.
10. There are issues which occurred between January 2025 and October 2025, which are within our timescales. However, there is not enough evidence of significant fault and injustice in that time which would warrant an investigation.
11. The Council has upheld some complaints and apologised for those.
12. As a publicly funded body we must be careful how we use our resources. We consider complaints where the person bringing the complaint has suffered significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the organisation. This means we will normally only investigate a complaint where the complainant has suffered serious loss, harm, or distress as a direct result of faults or failures.
13. We will not normally investigate a complaint where the alleged loss or injustice is not a serious or significant matter, or any injustice has been appropriately addressed. This is the case even where the complainant disagrees with this assessment.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because we would not achieve an outcome which would justify an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman