The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We cannot investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the actions of a charity which is funded by the Council. This is because the complaint does not concern an administrative function of the Council.
The complaint
The complainant, Mrs X, complains a charity funded by the Council, which in turn provides funding and space to her organisation to carry out activities, breached the terms of a contract, bullied her organisation and its members, delayed access to premises and mishandled stored items, amongst other things. She believes one person linked to the charity is to blame and is unhappy with the way the Council investigated her complaint about them. She also complains it failed to put in place any safeguards or provide any solutions to the issues she raised.
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 effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully.
The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
We investigate complaints about councils and certain other bodies. We cannot investigate complaints about actions which are not the administrative function of a council. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(1) as amended).
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 Mrs X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
While I appreciate Mrs X has experienced problems with the charity and the individual linked to it these problems do not relate to an administrative function of the Council. We cannot therefore investigate the issues or hold the Council responsible for them. The Council also has no direct involvement, from a local government administrative perspective, in dealing with complaints about the charity and we could not therefore say it was at fault for not putting in place the safeguards Mrs X wants or for failing to resolve her concerns.
However, even if we could investigate the complaint it is unlikely we would do so. This is because the main issues Mrs X has raised seem to date back several years. Any complaint about a council’s actions more than 12 months before Mrs X complained to us is late and the examples Mrs X has given relate to issues which took place between 2010 and 2021.
Final decision
We cannot investigate this complaint. This is because the actions complained about do not concern an administrative function of the Council.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman