City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (24 021 907)
Category : Children's care services > Looked after children
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 01 Jun 2025
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council declining to escalate Miss X’s complaint about its actions relating to her child in its care. Investigation would be unlikely to achieve any more than the Council’s own investigation has already provided.
The complaint
- Miss X said the Council had wrongly refused to escalate her complaint. This concerned decisions about her child in care and how it communicated with her about them.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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:
- we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
- further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
- we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or
- there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
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.
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- The substantive matters Miss X complained of to the Council concern decisions about her child in Council care, and the way it has communicated them. She wanted the Council to escalate her complaint and to provide clear reasons for decisions.
- The Council’s responses to Miss X’s complaints provide the rationale that led to it taking the decisions it did. While Miss X may disagree with that rationale, investigation by us would not be likely to lead to a recommendation that the Council provides further explanation, or to any worthwhile or better outcome.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because doing so would be unlikely to lead to a different, better or more worthwhile outcome than that already achieved via the Council’s own investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman