Oxfordshire County Council
Complaint overview
Between 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, we dealt with 84 complaints. Of these, 29 were not for us or not ready for us to investigate. We assessed and closed 33 complaints. We investigated 22 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 22 complaints and upheld 22.
100% of complaints we investigated were upheld.
This compares to an average of 89% in similar authorities.
View upheld decisionsAdjusted for Oxfordshire County Council's population, this is 2.9 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 1 out of 22 upheld cases we found the Council had provided a satisfactory remedy before the complaint reached the Ombudsman.
5% 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 Oxfordshire County 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.
Oxfordshire fails to provide alternative education for a year
Oxfordshire County Council has been told it needs to pay £5,000 to the mother of an Autistic boy to make up for the 12 months education he missed when he was unable to attend school.
Oxfordshire teen left out of school for 14 months because of council delay
Oxfordshire County Council has agreed to apologise to a teenager and her family and pay them more than £2,000 after she missed months of schooling during her GCSEs because it did not find her a secondary school place, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has said.
A complaint about the neglect of an elderly woman at an Oxfordshire care home has led the Local Government Ombudsman to issue its first joint investigation report into a care home and local authority.
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: 24 014 498
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- Remind relevant staff of the importance of effective complaint handling, adhering to timescales and ensuring a complainant is offered the option to escalate their complaint.
Case reference: 24 013 800
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council was at fault for its poor communication and three month delay in issuing an Education, Health and Care Plan. The Council will remind Special Educational Needs and Disability officers to contact parents/carers the autumn term the year before the transfer to discuss the phase transfer process with them.
- The Council will update its website to include information about phase transfers so parents/carers are informed about what this is, when it should be carried out and the relevant timescales.
Case reference: 24 006 454
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Domiciliary care
- The Council has agreed to work with the care provider to improve its records keeping, including the need to record significant conversations with family members and to help it understand the need to provide accurate information when responding to complaints.
Case reference: 24 005 830
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council agreed to review thirteen cases in the past two years where we found fault with its duty under section 19 of The Education Act 1996, to provide alternative education to a child out of school. It will:produce a dated action plan of how it will avoid recurrence of the same faults by making changes to practice and procedure or staff training; andreport this review outcome and action plan to its relevant scrutiny and oversight committee, so it can decide how progress against the plan should be monitored.
Case reference: 24 004 019
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council has agreed to send us an action plan which sets out how, in future, it will overcome similar problems in delivering education to young people who have moved into its area.
Case reference: 24 002 176
Category: Education
Sub Category: Alternative provision
- The Council has agreed to demonstrate that it has taken steps to improve its timeliness for progressing annual reviews of Education, Health and Care Plans.
- The Council has agreed to remind officers working in its Special Educational Needs and Disabilities team of the importance of submitting up to date information to the internal panel, when seeking specialist education placements for children, and consider whether officers should have access to a basic checklist of what the panel requires, for officers to use before submitting requests.
- The Council has agreed to demonstrate that it has investigated what led to the delays in arranging alternative education provision for Ms X's child after the Council became aware that no education was being provided and has taken steps to prevent such delays in future.
Case reference: 23 016 452
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council has agreed to by training or other means ensure the relevant officers are aware of the Council's complaints policy which sets out the timescales for responding to complaints.
Case reference: 23 014 461
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council will share the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation and a copy of our focus report Out of school, out of sight? with relevant officers. This is to emphasise the Council's Section 19 duty to secure suitable alternative education provision when a child is out of school for health reasons. The Council will also use the Ombudsman's findings to identify wider points of learning.
Case reference: 23 010 626
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- The Council review its approach to free school meals taking into account recent Government Guidance that addresses children unable to attend school. Free school meals: guidance for schools and local authorities - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
- The Council ensure officers have sufficient training and guidance to intervene when they become aware a child is receiving less than fulltime education and understand their s.19 Education Act duty.
- The Council review whether it has robust processes to complete EHC needs applications on time and how to deal with cases where delay may lead a child to miss education. Where a disabled child will be out of school for an extended period the Council should also consider the holistic needs of the family and consider signposting parents to other sources of advice, for example a Parent Carer Needs Assessment via social care.
Case reference: 23 008 538
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Other
- The Council is already reviewing and improving its section 117 aftercare processes. This includes updating the process for recording section 117 aftercare plans, staff training and updating its computerised records system. The Council will send us copies of its action plan for these improvements. We have therefore not made further recommendations for service improvements in this area.
Last updated: 4 April 2015