Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council carried out an Education Health and Care needs assessment. This is because the Council has largely upheld the complaint and provided a suitable remedy. An investigation by the Ombudsman would unlikely add to the one carried out by the Council.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I will call Mrs X, complains about how the Council carried out an Education Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment. She says the Council delayed completing the assessment, delayed seeking advice, failed to properly communicate with her and delayed dealing with her complaint.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, 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 and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. In its responses to Mrs X the Council largely upheld her complaints. It addressed all the issues she raised and accepted that there had been a delay in seeking advice and a delay in completing the EHC needs assessment. The Council offered Mrs X a £200 payment for the distress these delays caused her. It also offered her £250 for the time and trouble she had been too, and in recognition of the delay in dealing with the complaint.
6. The Council did not uphold Mrs X’s complaint that its communication with her had been poor as it found that she had been regularly updated and her correspondence had been responded too on time. Mrs X says she was not told that the draft EHC plan would be going to panel. However, this would not have caused Mrs X a significant enough injustice to warrant our further involvement.
7. I understand Mrs X’s frustrations, but we will not start an investigation into her complaint. This is because the Council has upheld nearly all of her complaint and proposed remedies in line with what we would seek to achieve. The one element not upheld did not cause Mrs X a significant injustice. It would therefore be disproportionate for us to investigate as we would not look to achieve anything significantly different.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because we could not add to the investigation carried out by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman