Service improvements

Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council

Showing service improvements between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026

Find out more about service improvements

When we find fault, we can recommend improvements to systems and processes where they haven’t worked properly, so that others do not suffer from these same problems in future. Common examples are policy changes; procedural reviews; and staff training. Service improvements from decisions are published for 5 years and those from reports are published for 10 years.

Showing 1 - 4 of 4 cases with service improvements

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Downloads the current filtered list of service improvement decisions for Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council as a CSV file.

  • Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council (25 005 166)

    Category: Adult care services Date: 23-Dec-2025

    Summary

    Mr A complained that a care coordinator, working for an integrated mental health and social care service, failed to support his son to apply for Universal Credit. We have not found fault by either the responsible Council or NHS Trust. However, we have found fault in how both organisations responded to Mr A’s complaint. Neither would accept responsibility for it at first. Both organisations have agreed to apologise, take corrective action and make a financial payment to address the injustice this caused Mr A.

    Service improvements

    The Council initially failed to accept responsibility for a complaint. It should review its handling of the case (either individually or with an NHS Trust it works in partnership with) as a learning tool. The Council should look for specific, measurable and realistic serviceimprovements to the way it considers and addresses complaints about integratedservices.

  • Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council (24 022 868)

    Category: Housing Date: 12-Jan-2026

    Summary

    Mr D says the Council placed him in the wrong housing band. There is fault by the Council in some parts of the complaint including delay responding to review requests. The Council is already making service improvements, and it has now agreed to apologise to Mr D and respond to his outstanding complaint which challenged a review decision on banding.

    Service improvements

    remind officers that housing decision letters should set out what evidence has been considered

  • Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council (24 020 246)

    Category: Education Date: 02-Feb-2026

    Summary

    Miss X complained about delays by the Council in reviewing her child’s Education, Health and Care Plan and its failure to provide a suitable education for them when they could not attend a school. We found the Council was at fault for not completing the review on time and for its complaint handling, which caused injustice to Miss X and her child. However, we found there was no fault in how the Council considered its duty to secure alternative education provision for Miss X’s child. The Council has agreed to apologise to Miss X and her child to remedy their injustice and make changes to its service to prevent the same fault happening to others.

    Service improvements

    The Council will review how it completes reviews of Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans and identify any improvements it needs to make to that process to ensure it is still able to complete reviews within the legal time frames when a parent or young person makes a request for Education Other Than At School during the EHC Plan review process. It will provide us with a copy of a timebound action place to make any improvements it has identified.

  • Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council (24 017 980)

    Category: Planning Date: 25-Nov-2025

    Summary

    Mr X complained the Council failed to progress his complaint about a building control breach in a timely manner. The Council took over two years to make any meaningful progress on Mr X’s complaint. This is fault and caused Mr X undue distress, uncertainty and frustration. The Council agreed to apologise to Mr X and make a payment to recognise the distress caused by the delay. We have also made a service improvement recommendation to reduce the risk of reoccurrence.

    Service improvements

    Remind relevant staff of the importance of providing timely updates to complainants.

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