The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Council delay completing mental capacity assessments because even if there was Council fault, it did not lead to a significant personal injustice that would justify us investigating.
The complaint
Mr B says the Council failed to document a mental capacity assessment on managing finances which it completed last year. Mr B says not having the assessment outcome meant the NHS delayed his discharge from hospital. This has affected Mr B’s mental health, he has been very worried, and he feels let down and not listened to by the Council. Mr B would like an apology.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide: any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
I considered the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and associated guidance.
My assessment
Mental capacity means someone can make their own decisions. Where there is doubt over this the Council can complete a mental capacity assessment. These assessments are about a person’s ability to make a specific decision at that point in time, as a person’s capacity can change.
The Council’s records show it was to complete three capacity assessments for Mr B, for a planned discharge from hospital in April 2024. In August 2023 the NHS chased the Council for the outcome of a mental capacity assessment on Mr B’s ability to manage his finances which it thought the Council completed in July 2023. The Council could not find any record of the outcome. At the end of September, the NHS again asked for this assessment for a meeting on 16 October. I do not know what happened after that or whether the Council completed the assessment for that meeting.
I do not need to know these details because even if the Council did not complete and provide the assessment in 2023, this has not caused Mr B’s claimed main injustice of a delayed discharge from hospital. This is because the NHS always planned to discharge Mr B no sooner than April 2024. Whether the Council completed a mental capacity assessment in July 2023, another assessment was always likely to be needed closer to the discharge, because Mr B’s capacity to manage his finances may have changed over that time. The decision on whether to discharge Mr B from hospital is an NHS decision, not a Council decision. The Council says it has completed the assessments, and yet Mr B still lives in the hospital, so there is no evidence to suggest the Council’s actions has delayed the discharge.
We recognise the matters Mr B complains about have caused him some upset and worry but we do not investigate all complaints we receive. We only investigate the most serious complaints. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the claimed injustices of the person complaining. The Ombudsman could achieve an apology for Mr B if we found the Council had significantly delayed doing the assessments or failed to respond to communications or manage expectations. But we do not consider the impact of the matters complained of are serious enough injustices to justify using our resources to investigate the complaint.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr B’s complaint because there is not enough significant personal injustice to him from the issues complained of to justify our involvement.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman