Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a home to school transport application. There is not enough evidence of fault to warrant investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained the Council had not fairly considered his daughter, C’s, home to school transport application.
2. He says this has resulted in the Council not granting C a bus pass and Mr X having to fund this.

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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. 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 not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.

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

5. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), 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 the complainant and the Council.
8. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

9. Mr X complains the Council unfairly assessed C’s application for home to school transport. He says the Council did not consider whether the route was safe, the distance or C’s medical issues.
10. The Council reviewed Mr X’s appeal and decided C was not attending her nearest suitable school and that it had offered C a place at the school, which had been declined.
11. We will not investigate this complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to warrant further investigation. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. We look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong.
12. In this case the appeal panel considered Mr X’s appeal and supporting information. There is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council considered Mr X’s appeal to warrant an investigation.
13. I appreciate Mr X is frustrated by the length of time the Council took to review his appeal. The delay in the Council’s appeals process has not caused a significant enough injustice to Mr X to warrant a further investigation into this issue alone.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault in how the Council came to its decision.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman