Devon County Council (23 012 641)
Category : Children's care services > Friends and family carers
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 24 Jan 2024
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about late special guardianship payments. Investigation by us would not lead to a different or more worthwhile outcome than that following the Council’s investigation.
The complaint
- Miss X said the Council lost her annual special guardianship payment form and the Council suspended her payments, which left her short of money. She said she had to chase a particular officer for two weeks before finding contact details for a more senior officer before missed payment of over £1000 was made up. She said there were problems with a particular officer every year.
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:
- we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
- further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, 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.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- The complaint correspondence shows the Council apologised to Miss X and made up the amount not paid. Were we to investigate, we would be unlikely to recommend a significantly different remedy.
- Miss X did not provide any evidence that the same problem had occurred in October 2022, so I cannot say there is a recurring problem. However, if she were now to experience a similar problem in October 2024 with an interruption to payment, she would be welcome to return to us after first complaining to the Council.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because doing so would be unlikely to lead to a different or better outcome.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman