The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision not to provide her son with post-16 transport assistance. This is because the Council has now agreed to Mrs X’s request and so an investigation could not achieve anything more.
The complaint
The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mrs X, complained about the Council’s decision not to provide her son with post-16 transport assistance.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
We will not start an investigation into Mrs X’s complaint. The Council originally refused Mrs X’s request but has now agreed to provide help with transport.
This is the outcome Mrs X wanted and we could not achieve anything more. An investigation is not therefore warranted.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because we could not achieve anything more.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman