The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council managed the annual review of a child’s Education Health and Care plan. This is because the decision to name a school has been appealed to the SEND Tribunal and other matters either have not caused a significant enough injustice or we could not add to the Council’s investigation.
The complaint
Mrs X complains about how the Council managed the annual review process for her child’s Education Health and Care (EHC) plan. Mrs X says the Council failed to issue a notice to amend, named a school that is unable to meet her child’s needs, made administrative errors and failed to communicate with her properly.
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 we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B)) We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (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
I will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint that the Council’s communication with her was poor during the review process. This is because the Council upheld this element of her complaint and apologised. This is an appropriate response and we could therefore not add to the investigation carried out by the Council.
I will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint that the Council failed to issue an amendment notice after the annual review and that there were administrative errors during the process. Whilst I acknowledge that these matters would have caused a certain amount of frustration, I do not consider that this constitutes a significant enough injustice to Mrs X to warrant investigation. A draft EHC plan was issued to Mrs X and amendments were made after she made comments on it. A final EHC plan was issued on time.
I cannot investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the school named in the final EHC plan. This is because Mrs X has appealed to the SEND Tribunal about this matter which places it outside of our jurisdiction. How the Council consulted with the school during the review process is not separable from the decision to name the school and therefore not separable from Mrs X’s appeal.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because she has appealed to the SEND Tribunal. Other matters either have not caused a significant enough injustice or we could not add to the Council’s investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman