Joint investigations with health organisations

Many complaints about care services also include concerns about other services such as those delivered by health bodies. The regulations also apply to health services and set out a ‘duty to co-operate’ when handling complaints that cover health and care services. This includes a duty to ‘co-ordinate the handling of the complaint’ and ‘ensuring the complainant receives a co-ordinated response to the complaint’.

The regulations say each body is required to agree which of the bodies should take the lead in co-ordinating the handling of the complaint and communicating with the complainant. Bodies must provide relevant information to each other when requested and attend or be represented at any relevant meetings.

Where more than one organisation is involved in someone’s care, that person (or their representative) can complain to any of them. They do not have to contact each organisation separately.

Where the council identifies there is a need for a joint investigation it should seek consent from the person affected to share their details with other organisations. If they are not able to give consent (e.g. because they lack capacity to do so), the council should seek consent from someone able to act on their behalf.

Councils may wish to set up memorandums of understanding with local health bodies in relation to handling complaints under the regulations. This may also include a commitment to meet regularly to discuss themes and trends within complaints received by organisations. This could be included in agreements between local councils and health bodies under section 75 of the National Health Service Act 2006.

Where organisations are not able to cooperate on considering complaints or agree about responsibility for any fault, this may need to be escalated to a senior level within each organisation concerned to try to resolve any areas where there is disagreement. A response to a complaint should not be delayed by disagreements between the relevant organisations. 

Where it is not possible to reach agreement, the organisations should write to the person who made the complaint and explain why, in this case, it has not been possible to provide a co-ordinated response to their complaint. Each organisation should provide its own individual response to the complaint and signpost to both the LGSCO (for social care matters) and Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (for health service matters).