Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council holding inaccurate information about him. The Information Commissioner’s Office is better placed to consider it.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council’s children’s services hold inaccurate information about him in its records. Mr X also complains the Council did not properly respond to his complaint about this.
2. Mr X says this inaccurate information could influence decision-making about his children’s care.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact 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 or continue an investigation if we decide there is another body better placed to consider this complaint. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
4. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
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 the complainant.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Mr X complained the Council holds inaccurate information about him in its children’s services records.
9. Mr X said he complained to the Council about this, but it did not properly respond to him.
10. Mr X has the right to ask for his records to be ‘rectified’. This means any factual inaccuracies are corrected. If the Council refuses to do so, he can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
11. Parliament set up the ICO to consider data protection disputes, which includes ‘right to rectification’ disputes. The ICO is better placed than the Ombudsman to consider if the Council should change its records, particularly because there are complex exemptions for children’s services case files. Therefore, we will not investigate this complaint.
12. As we will not investigate the substantive matters of the complaint, we will not investigate the Council’s handling of the complaint because it is not proportionate to do so.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because the Information Commissioner’s Office is better placed to consider it.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman