Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s consideration of Miss X’s school transport appeal. Investigation by us would not find that the original panel that considered Miss X’s appeal should have awarded transport, and thus we could not say that Miss X incurred the costs claimed as a result of fault by the Council.

The complaint

1. Miss X said the Council’s transport team is still failing to consider information presented to them and that she is still trying to get matters from 2021-22 resolved despite having “won” three times previously in complaining to the Ombudsman.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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:

• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. The background to this complaint is that the Council failed three times to properly consider Miss X’s appeal against the refusal of free home to-school transport for her child for the year 2021-22. She complained to us on each occasion, and we asked the Council to conduct a fresh appeal. The Council also paid Miss X £1000 during this time at our request to recognise the impact of its repeated failure to consider her appeal properly. It also amended its transport policy.
6. The Council has now offered Miss X £500 for the mileage she ran when transporting her child to school in the school year 2021-22. Miss X says this is inadequate considering the stress caused. She says she had to give up her job and to buy a different car to transport her child. The relevant issue is whether investigation by us would find a direct causal link between the first faulty appeal and the actions Miss X says she had to take in 2021-22.
7. It would not do so.
8. This is because the fault in the first appeal was the panel failing to consider whether there were discretionary reasons to uphold the appeal. The fault was not a failure to uphold the appeal. We have already stated in considering Miss X’s earlier complaints that we cannot say the first panel would have had to uphold Miss X’s appeal if it had acted without fault. The panel could have considered exercising discretion to award free transport and given a reason why it decided not to do so.
9. Therefore, we could not say Miss X had to change car or give up work because of a decision to refuse transport that a panel acting without fault would not have made. Just because the Council has since issued an Education Health and Care(EHC) Plan for the child naming the school, and thereby created a duty to provide free transport, does not mean the panel should have upheld the earlier appeal before the EHC Plan existed. And just because the Council has, in its fourth consideration of the appeal, decided to offer a payment to Miss X equivalent to the mileage rate it would have paid in 2021-22, it does not mean that a panel acting without fault in the first appeal would have done the same thing. It remains the case that the first panel could have refused the appeal without fault.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because investigation by us would not be likely to lead to a finding that the fault in the first appeal, or any subsequent fault, caused the injustice claimed by Miss X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman