Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint that the Council did not consider her complaints through the statutory children’s complaints procedure. The complaint is late.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about matters relating to her grandchild’s care and placement with foster carers. She says the Council was wrong to respond to these outside the statutory children’s complaints procedures.
2. She says this has caused her distress.

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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)
4. 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)
5. The Information Commissioner's Office considers complaints about freedom of information. Its decision notices may be appealed to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). So where we receive complaints about freedom of information, we normally consider it reasonable to expect the person to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.

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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. We cannot investigate complaints about matters which someone has been aware of for more than 12 months unless there is good reason why they could not come to us sooner.
9. Mrs X’s complaints relate to matters that happened in 2020/21. I have seen no good reason why she did not come to us earlier. Therefore, I will not investigate her complaints now.
10. But even if I decided Mrs X’s complaints were not late, I would not investigate. Most of them relate to matters which were decided in court or reports which formed part of court action. We cannot look at what happened in court.
11. Other complaints relate to alleged criminal activity by the Council. We cannot look at criminal matters; only the police can do so. We also will not look at complaints relating to the sharing of personal information and the Council’s response to a subject access request. The Information Commissioner’s Office is better placed to consider these matters.
12. And where we cannot look at the substantive matters, we will not consider how a council dealt with someone’s complaints. This is because we do not consider it to be a good use of public money.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because it is late.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman