Cambridgeshire County Council (21 007 982)
Category : Children's care services > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 19 Oct 2021
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about an assessment report written by the Council. This is not warranted by the claimed injustice, and we could not add to the Council’s own investigation.
The complaint
- Mrs X said an assessment report the Council wrote was faulty. She said it was not reviewed and was a defamation of character, showing gender bias and stating Mrs X “finds parenting in general anxiety inducing”.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide:
- any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
- we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
- further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
- 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
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 report about which Mrs X complains contains some tentative opinions, prefaced with “I wonder if…”. Before Mrs X complained to us, the Council accepted the report was sub-standard and agreed to re-write it. Had we investigated and found fault, we would have been unlikely to have recommended more than that.
- Defamation of character is a matter for a court, not us.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because this is not warranted by the claimed injustice, and it would be unlikely to add to the Council’s own consideration of the complaint or lead to us recommending further remedy.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman