Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s children services involvement with his family. It is unlikely we would find Council fault has directly caused the cessation of contact between Mr X and his children. The Information Commissioner’s Office is better placed for his data protection complaint. And we are unlikely to improve on the Council’s remedy offer for an unbalanced assessment.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, says the Council’s children services team completed a biased and unfair assessment which caused him to lose out on contact with his children and destroyed his relationship with his children’s mother.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by 'maladministration' and 'service failure'. I have used the word 'fault' to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), 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, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome, or
• there is another body better placed to consider this complaint. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
4. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mr X provided with his complaint and the Council’s reply which it provided. I considered Mr X’s comments on a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

6. The Council say that in the Spring of 2020 it received a serious safeguarding referral about the care of Mr X’s children. It decided to assess the family. It says Mr X signed a consent form for it to obtain information from the Police. When it did, the Council decided it had to share information with Mr X’s children’s mother, Ms Y, it says to ensure their safety.
7. At the end of the assessment the Council decide to take no further action and it closed its case.
8. Mr X says the Council’s assessment was unfair and did not properly included him. He says the Council should not have shared the information it received with Ms Y. He says the Council’s assessment and sharing information meant Ms Y stopped allowing him to have contact with his children and destroyed his relationship with her. He says the Council delayed in replying to his complaint and not replied fairly.
9. The Council in replying to Mr X’s complaint agreed its assessment had not included Mr X and his comments as it should have. It says it has provided Mr X with the assessment and will include on its records his comments. It denies it was wrong to share information. It says contact between Mr X and his children is a private matter between Mr X and Ms Y.

Analysis

10. It is unlikely our investigation would find fault in the Council’s decision to assess the family given the referral’s seriousness.
11. The Council has accepted the assessment should have been more balanced. It has agreed to consider Mr X’s comments on it. The likely remedy we would achieve for this type of fault would be for Mr X’s comments to be placed with the assessment. Given the Council is suggesting it intends to do this, it is unlikely our investigation could achieve more.
12. Parliament set up the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to decide Data Protection disputes. Mr X claims the Council should not have disclosed information about him to Ms Y. The ICO is better placed to consider if the Council breached Data Protection rules in disclosing that information. This is particularly so because this case involves child protection for which there are complex exemptions.
13. The Council has no power to prevent Mr X’s children from seeing him as it does not have parental responsibility for those children. Only Ms Y or a Court can do so. Our investigation could not achieve more contact for Mr X, nor is it likely to say the Council caused the contact to stop. Ms Y made that decision.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is unlikely our investigation could find fault which has caused the claimed injustice of missed contact with children. Also, the ICO is better placed.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman