Worcestershire County Council (25 026 298)
Category : Education > Special educational needs
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 20 Sep 2026
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint about the way the Council made its decision not to carry out a reassessment of her child’s special educational needs. This is because Miss X has used her right of appeal to challenge the decision itself.
The complaint
- Miss X complains about the way the Council decided not to carry out a reassessment of her child’s special educational needs. She says the Council failed to follow a lawful and fair decision-making process and went against relevant legal advice. She says the Council then mishandled her complaint about the matter.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
- 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. We may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to use this right but cannot investigate if they have already used it. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
- 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.
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by Miss X and the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- While Miss X complains about the way the Council made its decision, she has challenged the decision itself with the Tribunal. The Tribunal looks at whether the decision was correct and we cannot separately investigate any complaint about the way the decision was made.
- 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.
Final decision
- We cannot investigate this complaint because Miss X has appealed against the Council’s decision to the Tribunal.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman