The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about the school named in her child, Y’s, Education, Health and Care Plan and Council decision-making related to Y’s school transport. We cannot investigate her disagreement with the named school because she used her right of appeal to the SEND Tribunal. Since bringing her complaint to us, the Council has reviewed its decision and upheld her appeal regarding Y’s school transport. An investigation would be unlikely to lead to a different outcome or achieve anything more.
The complaint
Ms X complains about the school named in her child, Y’s, Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan and its decision-making regarding Y’s school transport. She says Y has been denied access to suitable education and the matter has caused her and her partner distress and affected their mental health. She wants the Council to provide her child with suitable education and school transport, acknowledge the distress it has caused and improve its service.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
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 Tribunal in this decision statement.
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 further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(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
We cannot investigate Ms X’s complaint about the school named in Y’s EHC Plan or the planned start date. Ms X appealed to the SEND Tribunal about this matter, so we have no power to investigate.
Since bringing her complaint to us, the Council has reviewed its decision regarding Y’s school transport. It upheld her appeal and agreed to provide Y with transport to school, including a passenger assistant.
We will not investigate this. The Council upheld the appeal and has now agreed to provide suitable transport. An investigation by us would be unlikely to lead to a different outcome or achieve anything more.
Final decision
We cannot investigate Ms X’s complaint about the school named in her child’s Education, Health and Care Plan because she used her right of appeal to the SEND Tribunal. We will not investigate her complaint about school transport because it is unlikely an investigation would lead to a different outcome.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman