Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the content of an adult social care needs assessment completed in July 2020. This is because the complaint is late.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council has refused to correct errors in an Adult Social Care needs assessment report completed with his son in July 2020. He says this has caused him frustration and distress. He wants the Council to remove the incorrect information from the report.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

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

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. The Council completed an adult social care needs assessment with Mr X’s adult son, Y, in July 2020.
7. Mr X was unhappy with the assessment report as he said some of the information contained within it was incorrect. He wrote to the Council the same month setting out what parts of the report he considered to be incorrect.
8. In September 2020 he made a formal complaint to the Council. The Council offered to meet with him to discuss the matter, but Mr X declined this. It told him it could not change the report, but if he sent a list of his proposed amendments it would add this to the report to be read alongside it.
9. In December 2020 the Council sent Mr X a stage 1 complaint response. It apologised for any distress caused by the report and offered to review the report with him to try and address his concerns.
10. Mr X says he continued to raise his concerns during 2021 and 2022. In October 2022 the Council completed a new needs assessment with Y. Mr X says the Council told him the resulting report would refer to the information he considered incorrect in the July 2020 report and retract it.
11. Mr X received the needs assessment report in February 2023 but it did not refer to the 2020 report.

My findings

12. Mr X had concerns about the Council’s actions more than 12 months ago. Therefore, this is a late complaint and we should not investigate. We have discretion to set aside this discretion where there are good reasons. In this case I have decided not to exercise this discretion because it is reasonable to expect Mr X to have complained to us sooner.
13. Even if the complaint was not late, assessment reports are professional opinion and we could not ask the Council to change the report. The Council told Mr X it would add his comments to be read alongside the report if he sent them in, which is what we would expect. Further investigation would be unlikely to find fault or lead to a different outcome.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because it is late and there is no good reason why he could not have complained to us earlier.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman