The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about children services actions between December 2019 and May 2020. There are no good reasons why the late complaint rule should not apply.
The complaint
The complainant, whom I shall call Ms X, says the Council failed to support her properly as a friends and family carer, and have not replied to her complaint properly.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a Council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Ms X which includes the Council reply to her.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Miss X says that she cared for a great niece between December 2019 and May 2020. She says the child’s mother did not have capacity to do so. She says the Council should have taken the child into care and placed her with her. She says she received no support, including financial support, for caring for the child.
Ms X says she complained to the Council in June 2020. It replied in July 2020. Ms X asked the Council to escalate the complaint to stage two of its complaint procedures in early August 2020. She then chased the Council in late August 2021, over year later. Ms X chased the Council three further times until December 2021. She then complained to us in July 2022.
The events Ms X complains of are more than 12 months old. We cannot investigate the complaint unless there are good reasons why Ms X delayed in complaining to us. Here there are not. There is a 12 month gap in her complaint pursuit and then a further seven month gap between December 2021 and contacting us.
We also will not investigate her complaint about the way the Council dealt with her complaint. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.
Final decision
We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there are no good reasons why the late complaint rule should not apply.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman