Isle of Wight Council (23 004 178)
Category : Children's care services > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 17 Jul 2023
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision not to consider Mr X’s complaint about a social worker until court proceedings have concluded. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault.
The complaint
- Mr X complained about the Council’s decision that it will not investigate the actions of a social worker involved with his family until court proceedings have concluded.
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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mr X complained to the Council about the actions of a social worker involved with his family. The Council told Mr X it had accepted his complaint under the children’s statutory complaints procedure but the complaint was currently on hold due to ongoing court proceedings.
- It told Mr X he could re-submit his complaint for investigation at stage two of the statutory procedure, once court proceedings had concluded.
- Regulations governing the children’s statutory complaints procedure set out circumstances when a Council should not consider a complaint or should not continue to do so. Councils have discretion to not consider a complaint where it considers doing so may prejudice concurrent court proceedings. The Council has decided this applies to this case and so has put the complaint on hold.
- This decision appears in line with the regulations. We will not investigate this complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s decision making.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault to justify further investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman