Summary: Mr B complains about the way the Council has been communicating with him. The Ombudsman will not investigate the complaint because the Council has now taken appropriate action and an investigation by the Ombudsman would be unlikely to lead to a different outcome.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to as Mr B, complains about the way the Council has been communicating which did not take proper account of the reasonable adjustments he requires. This has resulted in Mr B feeling hurt and disappointed and he has had to spend time and money chasing the Council for information.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe it is unlikely an investigation will lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
3. 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

4. In considering the complaint I spoke to Mr B and reviewed the information he and the Council provided. I gave Mr B the opportunity to comment on my draft decision and considered what he said.

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What I found

5. Mr B’s family receives care from the Council and Mr B acts as his family’s representative in its dealings with the Council.
6. Mr B has autism, learning disabilities and a personality disorder and this means he requires reasonable adjustments to be made by the Council when it communicates with him.
7. In 2016 Mr B says the Council drew up a communications plan setting out how it would communicate with him. This plan should have been reviewed every six months, but Mr B says it was not. He says his life was made much harder because of the Council’s failure to communicate with him in accordance with the plan.
8. Recently he complained to the Council about this. It responded by apologising for sending him secure emails which he found difficult to open and which generated notifications on his mobile phone at all hours. It confirmed it would stop sending these and drew up a new plan to manage communication between the Council and Mr B. It invited his comments on the plan and confirmed it would review the plan and write to him in six months’ time.
9. Dissatisfied with the Council’s response, Mr B complained to the Ombudsman. He confirmed that since the introduction of the new plan he has not needed to contact the Council.

Assessment

10. The Council responded to Mr B’s complaint by apologising for its fault, stopping the secured emails and setting up a new communications plan which it will review after 6 months. Were the Ombudsman to investigate the complaint it is unlikely we would recommend the Council take any significantly different action to that it has already taken.
11. While I note Mr B says there have been problems with communication dating back to 2016, the Local Government Act 1974, which sets out our powers, imposes restrictions on what we can investigate. The time restriction highlighted at paragraph 3 of this statement applies to these older issues and they are too far in the past to be investigated by the Ombudsman now.
12. Mr B says he was continually woken up by the arrival of the secured emails and I do not doubt this was stressful. However, the Council has now acted to stop them and it has confirmed it will no longer be sending them to him.

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Final decision

13. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council has now taken appropriate action and an investigation by the Ombudsman would be unlikely to lead to a different outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman