School admission appeals

If the appeal relates to a maintained school (including community, foundation, voluntary-aided or voluntary-controlled), complaints should be made to the Ombudsman.

The Education Funding Agency (EFA) deals with complaints about appeals for Academies and Free Schools.

If a school converts part way through the appeal process or shortly afterwards, signposting should be as follows:

• If conversion occurs after the decision not to admit but before the appeal has been heard, the EFA will consider any complaint.
• If conversion occurs after the appeal hearing, complaints should be made to the Ombudsman. If fault causing injustice is found, we will make recommendations, but pass them to the EFA who will be responsible for monitoring compliance.

Factsheets about school admissions appeals can be found on our website.

Housing complaints

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman deals with complaints about all local authority housing activities other than those about the provision and management of social housing, which are for the Housing Ombudsman. Authorities are asked to clearly signpost to the relevant Ombudsman when sending their final complaint responses. If you are unclear about which Ombudsman can help we have a detailed guide here.

Both Ombudsmen are able to conduct joint investigations and there is a memorandum of understanding to help them resolve jurisdictional questions.

Health complaints

We can carry out joint investigations with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman where the complaint has elements covered by both Ombudsman schemes. We have a separate team who deal solely with joint complaints and these cover health and social care. The joint team does not deal with Parliamentary complaints. More information about the Joint Working Team can be found here.

Employment complaints

Sometimes we will receive a complaint from someone that relates directly to their current or former employment with a council or authority. The Local Government Act 1974 specifically bars us from looking at these types of complaints. Where we receive such a complaint we will tell the council or authority we have received a complaint but will not provide the council or authority concerned with any details of it.

Children’s complaints: Early referral 

Statutory guidance (Children's social care: getting the best from complaints - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)), says that statutory children’s complaints can be referred to the Ombudsman after stage 2 has been completed in limited circumstances (see Annex 3).

If the council believes the criteria for an early referral is met (including that the complainant consents to this) we would expect the council to write to the complainant explaining why it believes the criteria has been met and providing them with the contact details for the Ombudsman. The complainant may then contact the Ombudsman and present this letter as evidence that an early referral has been requested.

The referral will then be considered by the Ombudsman’s Assessment Team who will reach a decision on whether the conditions for an early referral have been met.

In rare cases it may not be appropriate for the complainant to be expected to raise a complaint themselves (e.g. because they require reasonable adjustments). In these cases the Council should seek advice from the Ombudsman’s External Training and Relationship Lead about how best to submit the complaint. The Council should not send personal information about the complainant to the Ombudsman without discussing this first.