North Lincolnshire Council
Complaint overview
Between 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, we dealt with 30 complaints. Of these, 6 were not for us or not ready for us to investigate. We assessed and closed 18 complaints. We investigated 6 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 6 complaints and upheld 4.
67% of complaints we investigated were upheld.
This compares to an average of 80% in similar authorities.
View upheld decisionsAdjusted for North Lincolnshire Council's population, this is 2.4 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 0 out of 4 upheld cases we found the Council had provided a satisfactory remedy before the complaint reached the Ombudsman.
0% 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 5 cases.
In 5 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 North Lincolnshire 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.
No reports published
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: 24 005 359
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council will issue guidance or training to relevant officers responding to complaints to ensure it responds to each point of complaint, considers if any identified fault caused an injustice, and how it can remedy any injustice.
- The Council will remind relevant officers of the Council’s duties to consider its section 19 alternative education duty as soon as it is aware that a child is not attending school. The Council should provide relevant officers with a copy of our guidance Out of school, out of sight? published July 2022.
Case reference: 24 000 521
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Charging
- The Council has agreed to remind officers of the need to produce care and support plans which explain how personal budgets are to be spent and that they update the plans whenever changes are made.
Case reference: 23 006 779
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council will remind its Special Educational Needs and Disability staff of its duty to complete the Education, Health, and Care plan process within the statutory timescales and inform parents of their appeal rights to the SEND Tribunal. This is regardless of whether a parent disagrees with the provision and school placement set out in the Plan and its ongoing efforts to find agreement with the parent.
Case reference: 23 018 577
Category: Children's care services
Sub Category: Other
- The Council has now amended Section 4.3 of the statutory complaints policy to differentiate between complaints made in writing and those made orally, in regards to timeframes for stage two investigations.
Case reference: 23 005 155
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- Remind relevant staff of the Council’s duty to issue EHCPs within timescales set out in legislation.
Case reference: 23 000 168
Category: Housing
Sub Category: Private housing
- The Council agreed to review why the failures in communication happened and to act to ensure they are not repeated on future cases.
Case reference: 22 017 322
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Assessment and care plan
- Within three months of thefinal decision the Council should create a specific, measurable, realistic andtimebound action plan to address the factors which led to delays in assessingthe service user's need for s117 aftercare, with the aim of reducing the chanceof recurrences.
Case reference: 22 009 253
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council will send a reminder to officers dealing with EHCP’s about the need to ensure the timescales set out in the code of practice are adhered to following reviews.
Case reference: 21 019 054
Category: Benefits and tax
Sub Category: Council tax
- The Council has agreed to review its communication and recording systems to ensure applications and queries in respect of exemptions and discounts are dealt with promptly and comprehensively and that full explanations are given for its decisions, in addition to sending out revised bills. (within three months)
Case reference: 21 011 046
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Other
- We found the Council at fault for a failure to provide support and assistance to the complainant, to assist him in accessing social care. It failed to do so because he funded his own care. This was fault as councils have a duty to provide such support to all care receivers. The Council has agreed that, within eight weeks of the date of this decision, it will write to the Ombudsman setting out what steps it has taken and intends to take to ensure that it provides the support it should provide to self-funding recipients of adult social care.
Last updated: 4 April 2015