Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint the Council failed to secure appropriate education provision for his child who has an Education, Health and Care plan. This is because Mr X has used his right to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) and these matters are too closely related.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains:
• his child has been without access to suitable education because the Council failed to address safeguarding concerns at the school named in the Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan.
• about how the Council handled the consultation process with other schools.
• about how his complaint was handled.
2. Mr X says this has caused uncertainty and distress for his child and family.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
4. The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the Tribunal in this decision statement.
5. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
6. We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

8. Mr X’s child has a place at the school named in the EHC plan. Mr X says the school would not put reasonable adjustments in place to accommodate his child’s special educational needs, so he removed his child from the school due to safeguarding concerns. Mr X complained to the school and the Council and requested a change of school. He says the Council did not communicate effectively with him about the outcome of the consultation process with other schools.
9. Mr X has appealed to the Tribunal. We cannot investigate this complaint because these matters are too closely related to those before the Tribunal.
10. I will not investigate the matter of complaint handling as it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint handling when we are not looking at the substantive issue.

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Final decision

11. We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint the Council failed to secure appropriate education provision for his child who has an Education, Health and Care plan. This is because Mr X has used his right to appeal to the Tribunal and these matters are too closely related.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman