Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council not following the statutory children’s complaints process. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to justify our involvement. The Council has already considered the concerns Mrs X raised at stage two and has apologised for wrongly labelling the response as stage one. We cannot add to the investigation the Council has already completed or achieve a different outcome.

The complaint

2. Mrs X says the Council refused to follow the statutory children’s complaints process, even though the issues involve her daughter’s Special Education Needs (SEN) and safeguarding. She escalated her complaint to stage two in October 2025 after she received a late and inadequate stage one response. Instead of completing a proper stage two investigation, the Council sent her a letter in October 2025 wrongly labelled as stage one and later reclassified it as stage two without carrying out any investigation.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

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

4. 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)
5. 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

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

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My assessment

8. In September 2025, the Council sent Mrs X a customer behaviour letter after she emailed several departments. Mrs X complained because she believed the letter was inappropriate, given her ongoing safeguarding and SEN complaints about her daughter, Miss Y. The Council reassured her that those other complaints remained open and under investigation.
9. We are not an appeal body. We do not decide whether a decision is right or wrong. We assess whether the Council followed the correct process when making its decision. If it did, we cannot question the outcome, even if someone disagrees with it.
10. The Council can apply its customer behaviour policy if it considers a person’s level of communication to be excessive. We will not investigate this part of Mrs X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making to justify our involvement.
11. Mrs X said the Council missed its stage one complaint response deadline, so she asked for a stage two escalation. In her stage two escalation request, Mrs X included a complaint about her daughter’s education and said the Council should have considered this under the statutory children’s complaints process instead of the corporate complaints process.
12. Mrs X’s initial complaint concerned a customer behaviour letter. The Council acted correctly by considering this under its corporate complaints process because it was not a statutory children’s matter. It would be unreasonable to expect the Council to change the process midway when the original complaint focused solely on the customer behaviour letter.
13. We will not investigate this part of the complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council and we cannot achieve the outcome Mrs X seeks.
14. The Council told Mrs X that it had already issued its stage two response and had made a typographical error by calling the stage two response stage one.” It apologised for this mistake.
15. Although the Council did not issue a stage one response in line with its published timescales, it chose to complete a full stage two investigation instead.
16. We will not investigate this complaint because we could not add to the Council’s investigation or achieve a worthwhile outcome by investigating.
17. Finally, we will not investigate how the Council handled Mr X’s complaint. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaint‑handling issues when we cannot consider the substantive matter.

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Final decision

18. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council not following the statutory children’s complaints process. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to justify our involvement. Furthermore, we cannot add to the investigation the Council has already carried out or achieve a different outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman