Service improvements

East Sussex County Council

Showing service improvements between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023

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 - 10 of 12 cases with service improvements

Export results (CSV)

Downloads the current filtered list of service improvement decisions for East Sussex County Council as a CSV file.

  • East Sussex County Council (22 004 427)

    Category: Other Categories Date: 03-Jan-2023

    Summary

    The failure to provide a recording of a coroner’s inquest as required by Government service standards is fault. There is no evidence documents used at the inquest were not copied to Ms X. A suitable remedy for the distress caused by the lack of a recording is agreed.

    Service improvements

    Review the inquest recording system to ensure it is fit for purpose and that suitable storage and back up systems are in place.

  • East Sussex County Council (22 004 391)

    Category: Education Date: 08-Mar-2023

    Summary

    Ms R complains on behalf of Miss P’s family about the transport offered by the Council for Miss P’s post-16 education. The Council did not consider relevant information about Miss P’s stepfather’s work commitments before deciding he should provide transport. The Appeal Panel’s decision is flawed because the Panel did not follow the Council’s published appeals process.

    Service improvements

    The Council will review its transport appeals process and correspondence, and the published information describing it, to ensure they clearly explain the process followed and the opportunities to comment before a decision is final.

  • East Sussex County Council (22 004 080)

    Category: Adult care services Date: 06-Sep-2022

    Summary

    The Council should have recognised far sooner that it should support Mr X with managing his finances. It should also have responded more quickly to his complaint. The Council has now agreed to waive the debt which accrued most recently and has apologised to Mr X. It will also make a payment to Mr X in recognition that its failure to respond promptly to the complaint caused additional distress to Mr X and his family.

    Service improvements

    Council will provide the Ombudsman with details of how it will expedite complaint responses.

  • East Sussex County Council (22 000 730)

    Category: Education Date: 16-Dec-2022

    Summary

    Mr D complained the Council failed to secure education for his daughter, who has special educational needs, for nine months after they moved into its area. We have found fault, as the Council failed to secure (or make sufficient efforts to secure), temporary education while it assessed her needs. This led to a significant loss of service to Mr D’s daughter. We set out at the end of this statement action agreed by the Council to remedy this injustice and learn wider lessons from this complaint.

    Service improvements

    The Council agreed to provide a briefing for its staff who work in providing education for pupils with special educational needs to cover three matters. First, the triaging of cases where pupils move into the area from those parts of the United Kingdom outside England. Second, to set out our expectation that when Government guidance places a requirement on the Council to act (for example with use of words like must or shall) that it should be able to demonstrate it has done all that might be reasonably expected to fulfil that expectation. Third, to cover circumstances when it is appropriate to refer to its unreasonable customer behaviour policy, taking account of commentary in the decision statement on this point.The Council agreed to review its current policy to support pupils with special educational needs who are not enrolledin school through its Individual Pupil Support service. This was to address our concern the present arrangements wereunlikely to provide for a full-time education or equivalent for such pupils andso fall short of the legal requirement the Council has when providingalternative provision. In particular, the Council agreed to review how it canbe more flexible about reviewing an initial commitment to only offer three hours of one-to-one provision if a child engages with that. It should not have anypolicy that it only reviews that offer after six weeks.

  • East Sussex County Council (21 019 099)

    Category: Adult care services Date: 20-Jan-2023

    Summary

    Mrs X complained about delays with the Council in completing a DRE assessment and reviewing her appeal of the DRE assessment. Mrs X also complained the Council has failed to fully acknowledge the expenses she incurs because of her disability. We found fault with the Council for the delays and the avoidable distress, frustration and inconvenience this caused Mrs X. We also found fault with the Council failing to fully assess all Mrs X’s requested DREs. The Council agreed to ensure it has backdates Mrs X’s approved DREs correctly, complete a review of an outstanding DRE and pay Mrs X £300 for the avoidable distress, inconvenience and frustration caused.

    Service improvements

    The Council has agreed to complete a review into its financial assessment processes and provide evidence of the implementation of the outcome of this review within its service to the Ombudsman.

  • East Sussex County Council (21 016 612)

    Category: Education Date: 03-Nov-2022

    Summary

    The Council failed to make sufficient and prompt efforts to find Ms X’s daughter, Z, a suitable educational placement when her school could no longer meet her needs. It was also more than seventeen weeks late in finalising Z’s Education Health and Care Plan (EHC Plan). The Council has agreed to pay Ms X £1,750 in recognition of the injustice caused by these faults and to make several service improvements. The Council was not at fault for refusing to provide a personal budget to Z for a gym membership.

    Service improvements

    This Council has agreed to remind its staff of the Council’s Section 19 duty to arrange suitable education at school or elsewhere for pupils who are out of school because of exclusion, illness or for other reasons, if they would not receive suitable education without such arrangements and whether or not they are on the roll of a school.The Council has agreed to remind its staff of the importance of removing children, if appropriate, from a school’s roll so it can refer them to temporary educational services.The Council has agreed to remind staff of the need for timely consultations with educational providers, particularly when the child is, or there is a risk of, the child being out of education.The Council has agreed to investigate the reasons why a final EHC Plan was issued more than 17 weeks late and produce an action plan to outline how it can prevent this kind of delay occurring in future.

  • East Sussex County Council (21 013 700)

    Category: Environment and regulation Date: 27-Jun-2022

    Summary

    The Ombudsman found fault by the Council on Mr J’s complaint. It failed to take effective action, and carry out repairs, to prevent road surface water run-off draining on to his land. There were failures to respond to his reports, delays arranging work, poor record keeping, a failure to deal with his formal complaint properly, and a failure to show how it considered and assessed his concerns. The agreed action remedies the injustice caused.

    Service improvements

    The Council agreed to review why Highways failed to properly respond and take action on the complainant's reports.The Council agreed to remind officers of the need to make and retain contact and evidence of liaison with the water board on future cases

  • East Sussex County Council (21 012 426)

    Category: Children's care services Date: 17-Jul-2022

    Summary

    The Council was not at fault for how it assessed Mrs X as a potential adopter for a child. However, it was at fault for failing to adequately manage Mrs X’s expectations throughout the process. As a result, Mrs X believed she would be able to adopt the child. The Council agreed to apologise, make a payment for the distress caused and take steps to improve its procedures for the future.

    Service improvements

    Consider what improvements the Council can make to its guidance to ensure prospective adopters are adequately informed about the process for carrying out viability assessments. The Council should report its findings back to the Ombudsman.

  • East Sussex County Council (21 011 082)

    Category: Adult care services Date: 11-Sep-2022

    Summary

    Ms D complains the Council and NHS Sussex refuse to pay for the full cost of her mother, Ms M’s, mental health aftercare. We have upheld the complaint and recommended remedies for Ms M and service improvements for the organisations. The Council and NHS Sussex accept our recommendations, so we have completed our investigation.

    Service improvements

    The Council will identify everyone in its area receiving section 117 aftercare services who is paying top-ups for aftercare services. It will then produce an action plan for checking the top-up payments are in line with the law and guidance, and reimbursing people who have been charged top-ups incorrectly.The Council will ensure relevant staff are aware of the law and guidance that applies to section 117 aftercare top-ups and that these cannot be used for aftercare in a person's own home.

  • East Sussex County Council (21 005 827)

    Category: Education Date: 08-Sep-2022

    Summary

    Mrs B complained that the Council did not properly consider her reheard appeal for transport assistance for her daughter, Y, to attend college. We found fault in the way the Council considered her reheard appeal. The Council agreed to apologise, pay Mrs B £100 for her frustration, and rehear her appeal. It will also carry out a lessons-learned exercise and allow parents who unsuccessfully appealed for sixth-form age transport for the 2021/22 school year a reassessment of their cases with the chance to make verbal representations to the panel.

    Service improvements

    The Council has agreed to carry out a lessons-learned exercise regarding what a panel should do when it does not have evidence to back up its views about the flexibility of working parents, and how it should seek that evidence.The Council has agreed to review appeal decisions issued for the school year September 2021 where the panel refused sixth-form age transport to identify any parents who missed the opportunity of making verbal representations and offer them the opportunity of a reassessment with the chance to speak to the panel. If the panel then agrees transport, a remedy should be offered for the missed provision.

LGO logogram

Review your privacy settings

Required cookies

These cookies enable the website to function properly. You can only disable these by changing your browser preferences, but this will affect how the website performs.

View required cookies

Analytical cookies

Google Analytics cookies help us improve the performance of the website by understanding how visitors use the site.
We recommend you set these 'ON'.

View analytical cookies

In using Google Analytics, we do not collect or store personal information that could identify you (for example your name or address). We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data. Google has developed a tool to help you opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Privacy settings