Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X complaint about a penalty notice and the Council’s delay in responding to her complaint. This is because the Council has already withdrawn the penalty notice and apologised for its delay in responding to Mrs X’s complaint. A further investigation by us would therefore not achieve anything worthwhile.

The complaint

1. Mrs X said the Council issued a penalty notice for her child’s absence from school without following the relevant procedures and without checking the accuracy of the information it received from the school.
2. She said the Council did not check if there was any educational support or reasonable adjustments in place for the child. Mrs X said the Council withdrew the penalty notice but did not apologise or accept any fault.
3. Mrs X also complained the Council delayed responding to her complaints.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
5. 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 no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

8. The Council has already withdrawn the penalty notice and accepted fault. It said the penalty notice should not have been issued it in the first place. It also said the school had not put in place the relevant support for the child that it should have.
9. The Council told Mrs X that it had given the school advice to prevent this from happening again in the future. Furthermore, the Council said it will learn lessons from Mrs X case and work to improve its oversight of the national attendance guidance.
10. We note the Council has also already apologised for its delay in responding to Mrs X’s complaints and explained that the delay was caused by staff absences.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because an investigation by us will not achieve anything worthwhile. The Council has already withdrawn the penalty notice and apologised for the delay in responding to Mrs X’s complaints.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman