The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s decision not to carry out a full child protection investigation. It is unlikely we would find fault.
The complaint
The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, says the Council has failed to investigate safeguarding concerns he has for his child, B.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended) We have the power to start or discontinue an investigation into a complaint within our jurisdiction. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we think the issues could reasonably be, or have been, raised within a court of law. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 24A(6) and 34B(8), as amended) We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in the decision making, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended) We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect 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 an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Mr X, which included the Council’s reply.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X is B’s father. B lives with their mother. Mr X says a Court decided in November 2020 that he should have weekly contact with B. Mr X says this stopped in May 2022.
Mr X contacted the Council and asked it to carry out a child protection safeguarding investigation. Also called a s47 investigation. It considered his representations and decided not to. It says there was not enough evidence or allegations which caused it to believe it needed to.
Mr X’s complaint documents show allegations about events which date from before the last Court hearings. It is reasonable to expect those allegations to have been raised within those Court proceedings.
The information Mr X provided about events since November 2020 centre on the stopping of contact. The Council’s decision not to carry out a child protection investigation on the information Mr X provided to the Council is not one we would criticise. It is entitled to make a professional judgment decision. The evidence does not suggest that decision is flawed.
The Council says B no longer lives in its area.
Mr X is unhappy at the Council’s reply to his complaint. He says it has refused to escalate it to stage two of its complaints’ procedure. 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 Mr X’s complaint because it is unlikely we would find fault.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman