The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about missed payments by the Council for nursery fees. The Council has confirmed that rather than paying Miss X, it mistakenly paid the nursery directly. There is not enough remaining injustice to Miss X to warrant our further involvement.
The complaint
Miss X said the Council had left her over £200 out of pocket by failing to make payments towards her children’s nursery fees as agreed.
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, 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 and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council agreed to contribute to the nursery fees for Miss X’s children until September 2024. Miss X said it did not pay her during a period. The Council stated in response to her complaint that it had mistakenly paid the nursery directly during that period, reverting to paying her afterwards. It apologised and confirmed it would be happy to deal with any queries from the nursery about this.
The Council has confirmed its responsibility for the payments in the period concerned and offered to resolve any outstanding matter with the nursery, meaning Miss X has no responsibility to pay the fees to the nursery for that period. Its apology for the error is sufficient, and I would not expect it to pay an additional sum of compensation or to provide further explanation.
Final decision
We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because this is not warranted by any remaining injustice, or likely to add to the Council’s own response.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman