Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about serious child protection failings by the Council when Mr X was a child. The Council has already accepted the full complaint of several serious failings over a long period, and that its complaint handling was inadequate. It has offered a remedy similar to that we would have recommended had we investigated and upheld the same matters. Investigation by us would therefore be unlikely to lead to a different outcome, or to a significant sum of compensation, which would be for a court to determine.

The complaint

1. Mr X said there were serious child protection failings by the Council between the 1970s and the 1990s. He also said the Council failed to deal with his complaint properly, and stated that “This may be just an investigation to them, but to me, this is my life!”
2. Mr X wanted a heartfelt apology, for the Council to think seriously about how it deals with people bringing complaints, and to increase its offer of compensation for the upheld complaints.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide:

• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code and its Guidance on Remedies.

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My assessment

7. The complaint correspondence shows the Council upheld Mr X’s complaint. It is clear from the investigation documents that there were serious failings in Mr X’s care over a long period of time. Even though some of these failings pre-dated the Children Act 1989, they were of a nature that would have amounted to failings even under previous legislation.
8. The issue for us is therefore one of remedy. Mr X was seeking three things. He wanted a heartfelt apology, an increased offer of compensation, and for Council staff to improve the way they dealt with complaints of this kind.
9. The Council’s final letter to Mr X at the end of the complaint process accepted responsibility for what happened to Mr X as a child. It also stated the Council was sincerely sorry for this. I would regard the wording of the apology as unreserved.
10. We make recommendations for financial remedy where there is no other option available to return a person to the position they would have had but for the fault found. But we do not propose compensation for damages, which is a matter for a court to determine. Although the serious matters that happened to Mr X cannot have helped him in his adult life, and are more likely to have weighed on him, we cannot make a direct causal link. That would also be a matter for a court to determine. However, we can recommend symbolic payments for distress. Those payments can be as much £1000 if the distress was serious or prolonged, and possibly more. It is uncommon, but not unknown, that we recommend a sum of £5,000 or greater. Such sums are not intended to value the harm caused, but to recognise it.
11. The Council offered Mr X a total of £6,200 as a result of its investigation. This is similar to a sum we might have recommended as remedy in finding Mr X had suffered serious and prolonged harm.
12. We were previously involved (complaint 21 015 830) when the Council declined to consider Mr X’s complaint due to its historic nature. We found the Council at fault for failing to properly consider whether to exercise discretion to investigate Mr X’s complaint, which involved child sexual abuse. We take the view that children who suffer sexual abuse often take decades to be able to raise what happened to them as children, for reasons well-established by research. The Council agreed to deal with Mr X’s complaint and to pay him £100 for its failure to do so previously. This, and our well-established and publicised approach to these cases, suggests further investigation by us of the Council’s complaints process would not achieve more.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because:

• Investigation would be unlikely to add to the Council’s investigation, or to achieve the outcome Mr X is seeking; and
• Compensation for damages is a matter where Mr X has a right to go to court it would be reasonable to use as a court is better placed to consider compensation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman