Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of Mrs X’s daughter’s Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment. This is because the issues relate to the way the Council reached its decision not to issue her daughter an EHC Plan and she has appealed against this decision to the First-Tier Tribunal.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about the Council’s handling of her daughter’s Education, Health and Care (EHC) assessment. In particular she says the Council wrongly disregarded her private educational psychologist report and relied on the contents of its own educational psychologist report, which Mrs X disagrees with. She says the Council delayed in sharing this report with her, meaning she did not have an opportunity to comment on it before the Council made its decision not to issue her daughter an EHC Plan.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. 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)
4. The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the Tribunal in this decision statement.

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

7. Because Mrs X has appealed against the Council’s decision not to issue an EHC Plan we cannot investigate any complaint about the decision itself or the way it was reached. This means we cannot look at the Council’s decision not to accept Mrs X’s private report or the way it handled her concerns about the Council’s report. Mrs X disagrees with the content of the Council’s report and she can raise this as part of her appeal to the First-Tier Tribunal. It is for the Tribunal to decide whether the Council’s decision is correct and if not, it can order to the Council to issue Mrs X’s daughter an EHC Plan. This is not an outcome we can achieve for her.
8. Mrs X is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with her complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

9. We cannot investigate this complaint. This is because Mrs X has used her right of appeal to the Tribunal.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman