Telford & Wrekin Council
Complaint overview
Between 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, we dealt with 30 complaints. Of these, 10 were not for us or not ready for us to investigate. We assessed and closed 11 complaints. We investigated 9 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 9 complaints and upheld 6.
67% of complaints we investigated were upheld.
This compares to an average of 80% in similar authorities.
View upheld decisionsAdjusted for Telford & Wrekin Council's population, this is 3.1 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 3 out of 6 upheld cases we found the Council had provided a satisfactory remedy before the complaint reached the Ombudsman.
50% 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 3 cases.
In 3 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 Telford & Wrekin 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: 24 007 302
Category: Education
Sub Category: Special educational needs
- Demonstrate how, in the future, the Council will ensure that SEN provision is being actively delivered by an organisation.
Case reference: 23 010 156
Category: Children's care services
Sub Category: Child protection
- The Council agreed to review why copies of the initial assessments were not kept and handed to the new social worker.
Case reference: 23 002 758
Category: Education
Sub Category: Alternative provision
- The Council should issue written reminders to relevant staff to ensure officers know that it is the Council’s responsibility, not the school’s, to arrange annual reviews and commission professional reports for a child with an EHCP
- The Council should tell us how it will ensure better communication between the Council and schools when setting up annual reviews and arranging professional reports.
Case reference: 23 007 456
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Assessment and care plan
- Share this decision with relevant staff and remind it that officers should act quickly on any potential conflict of interest or risk to integrity.
Case reference: 21 013 576
Category: Housing
Sub Category: Homelessness
- The Council should:Complete an audit of letters sent to service-users over the last two years, particularly those letters where it is usual to read that a right of review has been granted. Where the Council finds that a right of review has not been granted, it should write to the service-user and provide him with a copy of this decision. If the Council considers it is appropriate to acknowledge any fault found with a payment, it should do so. If it does not consider that is appropriate it should remind the service user that he can raise a complaint with the Ombudsman. The Council should provide the Ombudsman with a report of its audit, setting out where it considered it appropriate to provide a payment to a service user and why and where it did not consider it necessary and the reasons why.
- Provide training to its housing team officers on the importance of and legal requirements for:•completing assessments and personalized housing plans on those that are homeless or threatened with homelessness •ensuring that the officers conduct regular checks on any property they place homeless service users in to ensure those properties are suitable•keeping accurate and full records
Case reference: 21 013 704
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Assessment and care plan
- Changes to procedures
- Learning outcomes review to include complainant
Case reference: 20 012 563
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Assessment and care plan
- The Council has agreed to reviewits training on the Equality Act to ensure it includes information aboutassistance dogs and the organisations responsibilities in respect of this.
Case reference: 20 008 596
Category: Planning
Sub Category: Enforcement
- The Council re-assessed how officers do site visits and asked officers to make fewer visits on a particular day so they can type up site notes and take actions sooner.
- The Council discusses enforcement cases regularly at one-to-one meetings for complex and significantly harmful cases.
- Enforcement officers have been reminded they can ask developers to show compliance with approved plans which is supported by planning officers securing existing and proposed topographical surveys at the application stage.
- The Council provided a copy of its ‘Training Note’ for planning and enforcement officers about monitoring compliance with approved ground levels and building heights which states: planning officers have been asked to request existing and proposed topographical surveys in written responses to pre-application enquiries and to request these during the determining of planning applications to either confirm there are no proposed changes in ground levels or to assess the impact of any proposed changes; as a starting point, the height of a building can be roughly assessed by counting the number of brick courses but, it is only a guide in the first instance; this technique does not allow officers to confirm whether the development is built off the correct ground level; if in any doubt, officers can ask the developer to carry out, and provide, surveys to show the definitive height of the development.
Case reference: 20 004 287
Category: Children's care services
Sub Category: Fostering
- c) provide the Ombudsman with evidence of the action taken by the Council to improve the disruption meeting process
Case reference: 19 021 140
Category: Adult care services
Sub Category: Safeguarding
- The Council has agreed to remind staff to ensure they keep to required timescales when responding to complaints.
Last updated: 4 April 2015