Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to take action in respect of aspects of the complainant’s son’s education. This is because parts of the complaint are late, and there is no prospect that the Ombudsman’s intervention would achieve anything significant.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I will refer to as Mrs X, complains that the Council’s failure to take appropriate action negatively impacted her son’s education between 2019 and 2021.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
3. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide further investigation would not lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Mrs X’s son has special educational needs and an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP). Mrs X complains about matters relating to his education which took place between 2019 and 2021. She says the Council’s failure to take appropriate action led to her son missing out on education and negatively affected his wellbeing.
7. Regarding her son’s special educational needs, Mrs X alleges that the Council failed to update his EHCP in 2019 and failed to review it in 2020 and 2021. She says that, although she brought concerns to the Council’s attention at the time, they were not addressed as formal complaints. So, they have not been formally responded to by the Council.
8. We will not investigate these matters because Mrs X’s complaint about them is late. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us. Mrs B did not come to the Ombudsman about these matters until the end of 2022. We have the discretion to accept late complaints where we decide it is appropriate to do so. That is not the case here. It would have been reasonable for Mrs X to have come to us when the issues arose. We will not investigate the matter now.
9. Mrs X also complains about the Councils response to her son’s permanent exclusion from school. Specifically, she complains that it failed to review the decision of the school’s exclusion panel. The Council has no power to do so. That being the case, this aspect of Mrs X complaint does not fall to be investigated. The way to challenge a permanent exclusion was to request an independent review, as the school advised Mrs X at the time. There was no role for the Council.
10. Finally, Mrs X complains about the Council’s response to an incident in 2019 when her son was able to leave his school’s grounds. Mrs X complains that the evidence relating to the incident was not properly investigated and the Council failed to properly consider her concerns.
11. The evidence indicates that the incident has been the subject of investigation by the Council and by an independent investigator. For the Ombudsman to reinvestigate the matter, there would have to be clear fault in the investigative process and a realistic prospect that we would reach substantially different conclusions. That is not the case. There is no evidence of fault in the way the Council has considered the matter. So, the Ombudsman cannot criticise the conclusions the Council reached or intervene to substitute an alternative view.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because parts of it are late and there is no prospect that investigation would achieve anything significant.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman