Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council failed to make contact with the complainant while her daughter was out of school. This is because the alleged fault on the Council’s part has not caused a demonstrable injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains that the Council failed to make contact with her throughout the school year 2023/2024, when her daughter was out of school.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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. We do not start an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mrs X says the Council failed to provide her daughter with an appropriate school place for transfer to secondary school in September 2023. As a result, she did not attend school for the following school year.
6. Mrs X complains that the Council failed to make any educational support available to her and failed to check on her daughter’s welfare. She wants the Council to explain why this situation arose. She also wants to be compensated for the educational provision her daughter missed.
7. The evidence shows that Mrs X did not complain to the Council until August 2024. In response to her complaint, the Council said it had not been aware that her daughter was out of school until she complained. It said that it had made offers of school places for September 2023 which Mrs X had rejected and that, in those circumstances, one of the schools should have placed her on its roll. This would have enabled attendance action to be taken. Mrs X does not believe the Council’s response addresses its responsibility for the outcome.
8. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because it is not possible to say that the fault she attributes to the Council caused the injustice she claims. In offering school places to Mrs X for secondary transfer, the Council discharged its duty to provide education for her daughter. The suitability of these offers is not relevant, and is not a matter for the Ombudsman.
9. In those circumstances, the responsibility for ensuring her daughter received suitable education fell to Mrs X, and how she did so was a matter for her. It is not therefore reasonable to hold the Council responsible for the fact that Mrs X’s daughter was out of school, or to ask the Council to provide compensation.
10. However, it would be reasonable to find that the Council should have been aware that Mrs X’s daughter was out of school. The question therefore is whether the fact that it did not has demonstrably caused Mrs X and her daughter an injustice.
11. If the Council had known, it would have been likely to have checked whether Mrs X was meeting her responsibility to provide her daughter with a suitable education and, if not, consider whether to take attendance action to ensure she attended the school offered to her. We cannot speculate on what the outcome would have been. That being the case, we cannot say that this omission caused a demonstrable injustice. There are therefore insufficient grounds for the Ombudsman to investigate the complaint.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because the alleged fault on the Council’s part has not caused a demonstrable injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman