Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of her son’s annual Education Health and Care (EHC) Plan review. This is because the Council has offered a suitable remedy for the injustice caused by its actions. We cannot look at whether any faults wrongly affected the outcome of the review as Mrs X has used her right of appeal against the revised EHC Plan.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains the Council misadvised her about the process for applying for a secondary school for her son and did not attend his annual review meeting. She also complains it has named a mainstream school in his EHC Plan when the school cannot meet his needs.

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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 provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)
3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
4. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
5. The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the SEND Tribunal in this decision statement.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by Mrs X and the Council.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. The Council acknowledges its advice to Mrs X about applying for a school place for her son caused confusion as it did not follow the statutory process. It has also accepted flaws in not properly considering whether to attend the annual review meeting and in its communication with Mrs X. It has apologised to Mrs X for these issues and offered her a payment of £300 in recognition of the distress they caused.
9. The Council has however declined to consider whether its actions wrongly affected the content of Mrs X’s son’s EHC Plan because the Plan itself is the subject of an appeal to the SEND Tribunal. This also means we cannot consider this point further as it is a matter for the Tribunal to decide whether the content of the Plan is correct and if not it may order changes.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council has provided a suitable remedy for the injustice Mrs X claims and we cannot consider whether its actions wrongly affected her son’s EHC Plan as she has used her right of appeal to the SEND Tribunal.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman