The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s actions after Mrs X raised a concern about her child’s special educational needs provision. There is not enough injustice caused by the matters complained of to warrant investigation.
The complaint
Mrs X said the Council turned a letter she sent into a complaint without her permission, then sent an unsatisfactory response and a lack of communication. She said her initial letter had been to try to get some more specificity into her child’s Education Health and Care (EHC) Plan, and that she had wanted to get a couple of issues regarding the running of review meetings acknowledged.
Mrs X said she had become caught up in the process and had had little explanation of her concerns.
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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a tribunal. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended) The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the SEND Tribunal in this decision statement.
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
We will not investigate a matter where we do not think there is likely to have been significant injustice.
Mrs X says she became involved in a process and got little explanation of her concerns.
I have read the complaint correspondence Mrs X provided. Her concerns involved wrongly treating her concerns as a complaint, the conduct of two virtual meetings, and her wish to change the wording of her child’s EHC Plan.
Mrs X did not suggest that her child lost out on provision because of the way the Council dealt with her concern, or as the result of a person not being introduced, or because a Council officer had not seen some documents before the meeting.
Mrs X would also have had the right to appeal to the SEND Tribunal against any decision not to change the wording of the EHC Plan, and it would have been reasonable for her to use that right. The Council’s treating her concern as a complaint would not have affected that.
While I can understand that Mrs X became involved in a complaint process that did not produce explanations that satisfied her, that is not sufficient injustice to warrant investigation.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because this is not warranted by the claimed injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman