The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about individual Council officers not being held to account for failings in an upheld complaint. Investigation would be unlikely to lead to a different outcome or achieve the remedy Mr X wants.
The complaint
Mr X said the Council had not held anyone responsible for an upheld complaint. He wanted three individuals to be held responsible for their failings.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide: we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) Under the information sharing agreement between the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), we will share this decision with Ofsted.
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The complaint correspondence Mr X sent us shows the Council upheld all his complaints, apologising for each and offering to make up missed payments and to cover costs.
We deal with councils and other public bodies corporately. We do not make recommendations that individual officers provide apologies or remedies as that would be a personnel matter.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because doing so would be unlikely to lead to a different outcome from that already offered by the Council or achieve the outcome Mr X is seeking.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman