Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council (26 000 274)
The Ombudsman's final decision:
The complaint
- X said the Council had failed to properly deal with her child’s Education Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment.
- X said the Council had failed to consider their complaint about these matters in line with its complaint handling procedures.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint unless we are satisfied the organisation knows about the complaint and has had an opportunity to investigate and reply. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to notify the organisation of the complaint and give it an opportunity to investigate and reply. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(5), section 34(B)6)
- We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)
- Under our information sharing agreement, we will share this decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- We agreed with the Council it would finalise its stage two complaint reply to X’s complaint, within 10 working days. And at that point it would notify X of their right to escalate their complaint to to the Ombudsman.
- The Council has agreed to resolve this part of X’s complaint, and it is then open to X to complain to us if they remain unhappy with the Council’s final response to the main issues they are complaining about.
Final decision
- We will not investigate X’s complaint because we have upheld a complaint about complaint handling fault and the Council has agreed to provide a response by a set date.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman