Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a council officer’s conduct and the content of their report for the Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment process. This is because Miss X has used her right of appeal to challenge the Council’s decision not to issue an Education, Health and Care Plan and it would not be a good use of our resources to investigate separately how the Council dealt with her complaint about the matter.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained to the Council about the conduct of a council officer preparing a report for her son’s Education, Health and Care (EHC) Needs Assessment and the content of the officer’s report. She says the Council failed to deal with her complaint properly and suggests the report resulted in the Council wrongly refusing to issue her son 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.
5. We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

8. Miss X has appealed against the Council’s decision not to issue her son an EHC Plan to the Tribunal. We cannot therefore look at the way the Council reached its decision or the content of any reports which contributed to the decision.
9. While I appreciate Miss X is also unhappy with the council officer’s conduct the Council and the officer themselves dispute the issues she has raised. We were not present at the time and cannot decide between Miss X’s version of events or the officer’s. It is also unlikely we could recommend any remedy for Miss X because, ultimately, the injustice she claims stems from the Council’s decision not to issue her son an EHC Plan and she has used her right of appeal to challenge this.
10. Miss X is clearly 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

11. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because Miss X has used her right of appeal to challenge the Council’s decision not to issue her an EHC Plan and it would not be a good use of our resources to investigate the conduct of the council officer or the Council’s handling of her complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman