Service improvements

West Sussex County Council

Showing service improvements between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025

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 11 - 13 of 13 cases with service improvements

Export results (CSV)

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

  • West Sussex County Council (23 012 587)

    Category: Education Date: 16-Jul-2024

    Summary

    Mr X complained the Council failed to provide his relative, Z, with suitable education for around two years. We cannot investigate the suitability of the education provided as Mr X appealed to the Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) Tribunal about this. We cannot investigate his complaint that the Council failed to amend Z’s Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan for the same reason. However, the Council was at fault for taking more than a year to respond to Mr X’s complaint. This fault caused him avoidable frustration and put him to time and trouble. The Council has agreed to apologise, pay Mr X £150 and take action to improve its complaint handling.

    Service improvements

    The Council has agreed to remind complaint handling staff that it should not delay local complaint handling about education and special educational needs provision because tribunal proceedings are active, doing so avoidably delays and frustrates complainants.The Council has agreed to set out its action plan for dealing with any continuing backlog of complaints, including any progress it has made to improve its complaint handling timescales to date.

  • West Sussex County Council (23 012 062)

    Category: Education Date: 04-Sep-2024

    Summary

    Ms M complains the Council delayed in the review process for her child's Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) and providing them with support. This has caused distress. She would like the Council to issue the final EHCP and provide the correct support for her child. The Ombudsman has found the Council at fault for delay in the EHCP review process and complaint process.

    Service improvements

    The Council will produce an action plan to demonstrate how it will meet statutory timescales for the EHCP review process.

  • West Sussex County Council (23 010 680)

    Category: Education Date: 28-Apr-2024

    Summary

    Miss B complained about the education provision made for her child who has special educational needs. We upheld the complaint, finding service failure contributed to Miss B’s child suffering a loss of education provision. The Council has accepted our findings and at the end of this statement we set out the action it has agreed to remedy this injustice.

    Service improvements

    The Council agreed to prepare a communication plan with parents, for use when it learns of a school failing or closing within its area, or where children from its area attend. This is to ensure parents in such cases understand the approach taken by the Council towards questions such as how it will monitor school improvements or help children relocate to different schools.

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