Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about the Council’s decision to restrict her contact, the scheduling of contact sessions with her child and information contained in court reports. There is insufficient evidence of fault and we are unlikely to achieve a worthwhile outcome. We cannot consider the content of court reports.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains about the Council’s decision to place restrictions on her contact. She also says it mishandled the scheduling of contact sessions with her child and included false information in court reports.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)
4. 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

5. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by the complainant.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. The Council’s policy says it will take action to restrict a person’s contact, if it considers their behaviour to be unacceptable. This can include verbal or written abuse, making unreasonable demands or persistent or vexacious contact.
9. The Council decided to restrict Ms X’s contact in February 2025. It sent her a communication plan advising her of its decision to restrict her communication to a single point of contact and its reasons for this. It further explained its reasons in its response to her complaint about this.
10. We will not investigate this part of her complaint. It is for the Council to decide when it considers a person’s behaviour to be unacceptable and what action to take in response. As long as the Council has properly considered the matter, we cannot question the decision reached. The Council has explained its reasons to Ms X. Although I accept Ms X disagrees with the decision, there is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.
11. We will not investigate her complaint about the scheduling of contact sessions with her child. The Council has confirmed a contact schedule is now in place. An investigation by us would be unlikely to achieve anything more.
12. We cannot investigate her complaint about the content of a court report. We have no power to investigate the content of reports which form part of court proceedings.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault in its decision to restrict her contact, we could not achieve a worthwhile outcome and we cannot consider the content of court reports.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman