Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to provide the speech and language and occupational therapy provision set out in Miss X’s son’s Education, Health and Care Plan. This is because the complaint is late and it would have been reasonable for Miss X to complain to us sooner. It is also unlikely investigation would achieve any worthwhile outcome for Miss X so long after the event.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council failed to provide her son’s speech and language therapy (SaLT) and occupational therapy (OT) during his reception year at school, despite this forming part of the agreed provision listed in his Education and Health Care (EHC) Plan. She says she has wasted a lot of time chasing this up with the Council but it has failed to provide a solution.

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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 effect 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 an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), 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 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)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by Miss X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. The information Miss X has provided shows she was aware of the missed provision in late 2023/early 2024, but she did not complain to us about it until October 2025. The complaint is therefore late.
7. Miss X says her son’s school raised the issue of missed provision with the Council at the time and it agreed to look at funding alternative provision for him but she decided it would be of more use the following academic year. However the officer dealing with the case has subsequently changed and the Council has misunderstood the issue in dealing with her complaint.
8. While I appreciate Miss X’s reasons for not taking the matter further at the time I consider it would have been reasonable for her to complain to us sooner. I also do not believe we could properly determine the impact of the missed provision on Miss X’s son more than two years after the issue occurred. In this time the Council should have completed at least one review of his EHC Plan and this process should have identified any gaps resulting from the missed provision and set out any provision required to fill these gaps in any amended Plan.
9. The Council confirms the child currently attends a specialist provision where SaLT and OT provision is embedded into the curriculum and says he was discharged from NHS services some time ago.
10. It would therefore be extremely difficult for us to say the child has ongoing injustice from the missed provision in 2023/24 or to determine an appropriate remedy for it now, even if we were to exercise our discretion to investigate.
11. I acknowledge Miss X claims her own injustice from the matter but at least part of the period she complains about falls outside our jurisdiction for the same reasons as I have set out above. While we could look at the Council’s handling of her correspondence over the past 12 months I do not consider we could reach any meaningful decision on this without getting into the missed provision itself, or that we could say the injustice she claims is significant enough to warrant investigation.
12. Miss 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

13. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is late and it is unlikely we could say Miss X’s child has significant unremedied injustice from the issue more than two years later.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman