Cheshire East Council
Complaint overview
Between 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, we dealt with 146 complaints. Of these, 32 were not for us or not ready for us to investigate. We assessed and closed 82 complaints. We investigated 32 complaints.
More about this data
Complaints dealt with – the total number of complaints and enquiries considered. It is not appropriate to investigate all of them.
Not for us – includes complaints brought to us before the council was given chance to consider it, or the complainant came to the wrong Ombudsman.
Assessed and closed – includes complaints where the law says we’re not allowed to investigate, or it would be a poor use of public funds if we did.
Investigated – we completed an investigation and made a decision on whether we found fault, or no fault.
Complaints upheld – we completed an investigation and found evidence of fault, or the organisation provided a suitable remedy early on.
Satisfactory remedies provided by the Council – the council upheld the complaint and we agreed with how it offered to put things right.
Compliance with Ombudsman recommendations – not complying with our recommendations is rare. A council with a compliance rate below 100% should scrutinise the complaints where it failed to comply and identify any learning.
Average performance rates – we compare the annual statistics of similar types of councils to work out an average level of performance. We do this for County Councils, District Councils, Metropolitan Boroughs, Unitary Councils, and London Boroughs.
For more information on understanding our statistics see Interpreting our complaints data.
Complaints dealt with
Not for us
Assessed and closed
Investigated
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Complaints upheld
We investigated 32 complaints and upheld 24.
75% of complaints we investigated were upheld.
This compares to an average of 80% in similar authorities.
View upheld decisionsAdjusted for Cheshire East Council's population, this is 5.8% upheld decisions per 100,000 residents.
The average for authorities of this type is
5.3% upheld decisions per 100,000 residents. -
Satisfactory remedies provided by the Council
In 2 out of 24 upheld cases we found the Council had provided a satisfactory remedy before the complaint reached the Ombudsman.
8% satisfactory remedy rate.
This compares to an average of 10% in similar authorities.
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Compliance with Ombudsman recommendations
We recorded compliance outcomes in 18 cases.
In 18 cases we were satisfied with the actions taken.100% compliance rate with recommendations.
This compares to an average of 100% in similar authorities.
Annual letters
We write to councils each year to give a summary of the complaint statistics we record about them,
and their performance in responding to our investigations.
Reports
The Ombudsman has published the following reports against Cheshire East Council
Find out more about reports
We issue reports on certain investigations, particularly where there is a wider public interest to do so. Common reasons for reports are significant injustice, systemic issues, major learning points and non-compliance with our recommendations. Issuing reports is one way we help to ensure councils are accountable to local people and highlighting the learning from complaints helps to improve services for everybody. Reports are published for 10 years.
Council did not consider exceptional circumstances when denying care payments to young disabled man
Councils must properly consider individual circumstances when they balance people’s choice to be cared for by a family member against the risk to their carer of working long hours, the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) has recommended.
Service improvements
The Council has agreed to make the following improvements to its services following an Ombudsman investigation.
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.
The latest 10 cases are listed below – click ‘view all’ to find all service improvements.
Case reference: 24 006 928
Category: Children's care services
Sub Category: Other
- The Council has agreed to create an action plan explaining how the Council is intending to increase its pool of personal assistants to help families in need.
Case reference: 24 005 228
Category: Education
Sub Category: Alternative provision
- The Council remind relevant Council officers of the importance of keeping clear, complete and contemporaneous records of its decision making when deciding if it has a duty to provide alternative provision to meet its duties under section 19 of the Education Act 1996.
- The Council will review its policy to only commission online provision for children who require alternative provision under section 19 of the Education Act 1996, due to illness or otherwise, and ensure the policy does not fetter its discretion to consider the individual needs of each child, in line with the legislation.
Case reference: 24 001 618
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council has agreed to provide the Ombudsman with an action plan specifically around how the Council intends to reduce mainstream Occupational Therapy wait times and a further update on its progress with the backlog three months after providing the plan.
Case reference: 24 001 596
Category: Education
Sub Category: Alternative provision
- the Council will provide training to its early help team, its attendance and out of school officers and its schools about the referral process to its medical tuition team for pupils unable to attend school on health grounds.
Case reference: 24 000 705
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council will remind its officers responding to complaints to ensure it provides a full complaint response when it becomes aware it has omitted to respond to a point of complaint initially.
Case reference: 23 019 884
Category: Education
Sub Category: Alternative provision
- The Council will remind relevant staff to respond to parent’s concerns about their children's education within three to five working days, and to avoid drift and delay in considering whether a child should receive alternative provision under section 19 of the Education Act 1996.
Case reference: 23 019 854
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council agreed to clarify, with staff responsible for responding to special educational needs complaints, the correct interpretation of the Council's complaints procedure. It should ensure it does not refuse to investigates at stage two of its process which are about issues further consideration by the Council might resolve.
Case reference: 23 018 188
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Charging
- The Council should review what happened in the safeguarding process to see whether any changes are needed to ensure as far as possible the same fault does not occur again;
- The Council should remind staff, and if necessary, provide staff training on the need to give proper reasoned decision when making decisions on a deprivation of capital.
Case reference: 23 017 017
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council will complete a review of its transfer processes to ensure they are in line with the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) code of practice in relation to Service children with Education, Health and Care Plans, and have due regard to the Armed Forces Covenant. The Council will produce a timebound action plan to implement any improvements it identifies as necessary as a result of that review.
- The Council will remind relevant staff members dealing with transfers of children with Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans that it should accept the EHC Plan as it is, provide a placement and/or the provision in the Plan and then complete the annual review process set out in the SEND code of practice.
Case reference: 23 014 723
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council has agreed to set out to the Ombudsman what steps the Council is taking as part of its Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) sufficiency planning to increase its number of specialist school placements, including expected timeframes for this.
- The Council has agreed to outline what steps it is taking as part of its SEND improvement strategy to improve its timeliness in carrying out annual reviews and finalising Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans, and when it expects it will begin to see improvements in this area.
- The Council has agreed to remind SEND staff that EHC Plans must be finalised within 12 weeks of annual review meetings.
- The Council has agreed to remind SEND staff that where a school has told the Council it can no longer meet a child or young person’s needs, it cannot rely on that school to continue providing the education in a person’s EHC Plan. Instead a suitable alternative education placement must be found for them.
Last updated: 4 April 2015