Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate X’s complaint about the Council terminating a charity’s contract. It is reasonable to expect the charity to ask the Court to decide this breach of contract dispute.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call X, says the Council unfairly ended its contract with a charity they run.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word 'fault' to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information X provided with their complaint. I considered X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

5. X runs a charity which provided help and support to people. It had a contract to do so for the Council. In September 2019 the Council said it had ended the contract because it believed the charity breached it. X denies this interpretation. X says the Council’s reasoning and investigation was inadequate.
6. The Council say this is a contractual matter and should be decided by a Court and not within the complaints’ procedure.
7. X say they also complain about the way Council the treats the service users. This includes X says the Council making assumptions and restricting users based on health and safety, and safeguarding, when X believes the restriction is really about reducing costs.
8. This complaint is about whether a contract to provide services has been breached. The charity has an alternative remedy by applying to Court for breach or enforcement of contract. It is reasonable in this case for the charity to do so because we do not normally investigate complaints which are about a dispute over whether contractual duties have been breached. We could not decide if the Council was legally right to end the contact. A Court is better placed to decide such a legal dispute.
9. We cannot investigate how this breach of contract has affected service users without their consent.

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Final decision

10. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is reasonable to expect X to apply to Court.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman