Summary: Mr B complains about the way the Council handled his appeal against its decision to refuse his application for free school transport. There was fault by the Council and it should apologise to Mr B.

The complaint

1. Mr B complains that technical problems with the Council’s online appeal form meant the consideration of his appeal against its decision to refuse his application for free school transport was delayed. He also complains the Council wrongly included personal and irrelevant information in appeal papers. He says that as a result of the delay he had to cancel a family holiday and was caused stress and worry.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
3. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome.

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

4. 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)
5. When considering complaints, if there is a conflict of evidence, we make findings based on the balance of probabilities. This means that we will weigh up the available relevant evidence and base our findings on what we think was more likely to have happened.
6. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered the complaint and documents provided by Mr B and spoke to him. I asked the Council to comment on the complaint and provide information. Mr B and the Council had an opportunity to comment on the draft decision.
8. Under the information sharing agreement between the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), we will share this decision with Ofsted.

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What I found

What councils must do

9. Local authorities must provide free transport for eligible children to attend their qualifying school. The relevant qualifying school is the nearest school with places available that provides education appropriate to the age, ability and aptitude of the child, and any special educational needs the child may have.
10. Councils should have appeal procedures for dealing with school transport issues. Government guidance says there should be a two-stage procedure. The first stage being a review by a senior officer and the second review by an independent appeal panel.

The Council ‘s policy

11. The Council’s policy defines the closest school by walking distance to the child’s home address with places available. Distances are measured by the shortest available route along which a child, accompanied as necessary, may walk with reasonable safety. When measuring routes the Council will not only consider roads but will also take into account Public Rights of Way such as footpaths and bridleways.

What happened here

12. Mr B appealed against the Council’s decision not to award free school transport for his daughter, X, when she transferred to secondary school. His appeal was considered by the transport appeals committee in August. The committee did not reach a decision because of discrepancies over the home to school distance of school 1 where X was due to go and school 2 which the Council considered was the nearest school to home.
13. The committee met again in September and continued its consideration of the appeal. They decided to award free school transport.
14. Mr B complained there had been problems when he had tried to make his appeal on-line which had delayed the whole process. And he complained the Council had included in its submission to the second appeal panel a print-out from a private Facebook group which had been formed to campaign against the changes to school transport.

Analysis

Submission of the appeal

15. Mr B said he first completed an online form to submit an appeal against the decision in May. When he submitted the form he didn’t receive an acknowledgement but there was no indication that he could expect to do so. The instructions on the website said that it could be up to six weeks before he would have a response. After six weeks he chased the Council and found it had not received the appeal. He completed an online form again and this time recorded a video of doing so where the same thing happened: it appeared the form was submitted but there was no confirmation. He chased a response after two weeks and learnt the Council had not received it. He then visited the Council and completed the form with an officer of the Council on their Council computer.
16. In responding to Mr B’s complaint the Council concluded there were no grounds to say there was any problem with the system so it could not say there had been any fault.
17. Because of wider issues with the implementation of the revised school transport policy the Council carried out a review. That concluded there had been problems with the computer system. These included automated communications to applicants not working properly and problems for applicants trying to upload information. I therefore consider that, on the balance of probabilities, the problems Mr B experienced in submitting his appeal were attributable to fault by the Council. Mr B said that they had to cancel a family holiday because it clashed with the date of the first appeal hearing. It may be that if the appeal had been processed when Mr B first tried to submit it they would have got an earlier hearing date but I cannot say that, on balance, this would be the case. The Council had received a significantly increased number of appeals which had presented problems. So it could be that this would still have been the earliest date. I consider the Council should apologise to Mr B for the problems in submitting the appeal but I do not consider that any other remedy is warranted.

Facebook group information

18. In the set of documents for the second appeal meeting there was included a screen-print of a page from a Facebook group set up to campaign against the school transport issues. This included exchanges between Mrs B and another person. At the meeting the officers apologised for the inclusion of the information which had been a mistake.
19. It is not for me to decide whether the inclusion of this information was a breach of data protection legislation. Mr B’s complaint on this point was the he considered it was wrong that officers had been looking at information on what was a private Facebook group. In responding to his complaint the Council accepted this was wrong and apologised but did not agree the information was private. It noted that you had to be a member of the group to make posts but the page was in the public domain.
20. The Council has not explained why officers were looking at this Facebook page which was the crux of the issue for Mr B. I understand his concerns as this does appear to be inappropriate. But I do not consider that further investigation of this point is warranted. I do not consider it caused Mr B a significant injustice and I cannot, therefore justify further action.

Agreed action

21. In responding to Mr B’s complaint the Council did apologise for some issues which have not been the subject of this investigation. But I consider the Council should apologise for the problems Mr B experienced in submitting his complaint. It should do so within a month of this decision.

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Final decision

22. There was fault by the Council and it will apologise to Mr B.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman