Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s conduct of a safeguarding investigation and the Council’s complaint handling. Doing so would not be likely to lead to any worthwhile outcome.

The complaint

1. Mrs X said she made a school complaint resulting in her child being out of education. She said the school raised a false safeguarding allegation of fabricated induced illness of her child and that it made-up medical matters about her. She said she was advised to raise a complaint through the Council’s whistleblowing process. She said this failed to resolve the matter, and the Council failed to investigate properly or to follow up.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• there is another body better placed to consider this complaint, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

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

3. 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).
4. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
5. We cannot investigate most complaints about what happens in schools. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5, paragraph 5(2), as amended)
6. The Courts have said that we cannot investigate a complaint about any action by a council, concerning a matter which is itself out of our jurisdiction. (R (on the application of M) v Commissioner for Local Administration [2006] EHWCC 2847 (Admin)).
7. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended).
8. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

9. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
10. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

11. This complaint comes in the context of a previous complaint 23 006 720 upheld by us. That complaint, and this one, contain many facets.
12. 23 006 720 considered matters relating to Mrs X’s child being out of education. It also considered the Council’s response to the safeguarding referral made by the child’s former school concerning Mrs X. It is clear from the final decision in that complaint that Mrs X was aware of much of the content of the referral before March 2024 and as it was referred to in detail by us. We will not consider the same matters twice.
13. However, I accept that Mrs X found out more about the content of the safeguarding referral in August 2024. So, even though these new matters were by then almost two years past, I have not treated the complaint about the new matters she discovered in August 2024 as late. But these matters came about by the actions of a school, and the Council’s only role was to deal with the safeguarding referral. The extra details’ only significance beyond what was referred to in complaint 23 006 720, is that they contained extra claims Mrs X said were untrue that she had not known about earlier.
14. Were we to investigate the new matters about the extra claims we could not consider the actions of the child’s former school in making the referral. And matters of data inaccuracy or misuse by any organisation remain matters the Information Commissioner is better placed to consider than us. It also remains the case that the Council did not uphold any safeguarding concern involving Mrs X based on the new matters any more than the ones we have already referred to in 23 006 720. So, we would be unlikely to find any injustice to Mrs X caused by fault by the Council. While Mrs X feels the Council should have acted differently, including in dealing with her complaint, that is not of itself evidence of fault in the substantive matter, which was its response to the safeguarding referral. And it would not be a good use of resources to investigate the Council’s complaint handling alone.

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Final decision

15. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because doing so would be unlikely to lead to any worthwhile outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman