Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the Council’s decision not to provide her daughter with free transport to school. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council for us to question the merits of its decisions.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I shall call Miss X, complains about the decision not to provide her daughter with free transport to school.

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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’. 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 it is unlikely we would find fault. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
3. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Miss X and the Council’s school transport policy.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Councils must apply their transport policy when deciding entitlement to transport assistance. But they also have the discretion to consider exceptional circumstances. They must have a review or appeal process by which to do so.
7. Miss X asked the Council to provide her daughter with free transport to school. The Council refused. It said Miss X has chosen not to send her daughter to the nearest suitable school. The school she has chosen is 7 miles from home when the nearest suitable school is 3 miles from home.
8. Miss X appealed the Council’s decision. She said the village where she lives has limited transport and the school she chose has a school bus which serves the village. She says she is on a low income and cannot afford the petrol costs to get her daughter to school.
9. The Council considered Miss X’s appeal at the final stage of its process.
10. The Council explained why it had refused Mrs X’s request. Mrs X had the opportunity to present her case. The Senior Officer considered the information from Miss X. They decided the Council had properly applied its policy. The panel noted the Council’s policy says:

“Children in years 7 – 11 from low-income families are entitled to transport where they attend one of the three nearest available schools to their home address providing those schools are between 2 and 6 miles from their home address by the shortest road route. The school Miss X chose for her daughter is 7 miles from their home.”

11. Miss X disagrees with the Council’s decision. But this is not evidence of fault. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body, and we cannot criticise a properly made decision or intervene to substitute an alternative view. As I explain in paragraph 3, we can only criticise a council’s decision if there was fault in the way it was reached.
12. The evidence available shows the Council reached a decision it was entitled to, taking into account the information it was presented with. Based on the evidence available, it is unlikely an investigation would find enough fault with the way the Council has acted to question the decisions reached. We will not therefore investigate Miss X’s complaint.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council for us to be able to question the merits of its decisions.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman