Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to respond to Mrs X’s requests to confirm who funded the special educational needs provision set out in her son’s Education, Health and Care Plan. This is because the issue did not cause Mrs X or her son significant injustice.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains the Council failed to confirm whether it funded the special educational needs provision set out in her child’s Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan. She says she is concerned his support will be interrupted when he transitions to a new school and claims stress and uncertainty from the Council’s failure to respond.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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, 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, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34(B))

3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone has a right of appeal, reference or review to a tribunal about the same matter. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to use this right. (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 Tribunal in this decision statement.

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

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

Back to top

My assessment

8. We do not investigate all the complaints we receive. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the alleged injustice to the person complaining. We only investigate the most serious complaints.
9. I appreciate Mrs X wanted clarity about the funding of her child’s special educational needs provision but she does not suggest he has missed out on that provision; rather, she just wants to know how it was funded. Not knowing this is not a significant injustice and does not warrant the resources needed to carry out an investigation. Further, her child has now been in his new school for a whole academic year and an investigation into who was funding the provision provided by his previous school would not achieve any worthwhile outcome for Mrs X or her son. Any failure to put in place the provision required would be a separate complaint and we would expect any gaps in his progress to have been identified as part of the annual review process. Had the Council identified any such gaps we would expect it to put in place any further provision needed under a revised EHC Plan, and if Mrs X believes it has failed to do this it would be reasonable for her to appeal to the Tribunal.
10. 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.

Back to top

Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the issue complained about did not cause significant injustice.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman