In December 2023 the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman published its annual report. A section on internal reviews (1) describes how the LGSCO randomly samples 21 decision statements from across the different complaint areas three times per year to assess the quality of its decision making.
A decision statement is a final decision made at either the assessment stage (i.e. deciding whether to investigate a complaint or not) or at the outcome of an investigation. The decision statements are selected from the assessment, investigation and joint working teams and reviewed by senior staff including the Ombudsman himself. The target is for 60 out of 63 sampled decision statements to meet the standard of ‘reasonable and defensible’ (2) annually (around 95 percent). In 2022-23, 58 out of 63 statements met the target.
Feedback on decision statements that are not found to meet the standard is given to the individual investigators and their managers and sometimes decisions are amended, or complaints re-opened, although not always. General advice is provided to all investigators to avoid similar errors in future.
Although 58 out of 63 statements meeting the target does sound high, this equates to approximately 8 percent of decisions not making the grade. Given how many decision statements the LGSCO is making in total, a large number of complaints will contain significant errors or have been ‘wrongly’ decided.
In 2022-23 there were 6205 complaints dealt with by initial investigation (i.e. at the assessment stage) which could mean around 490 decision statements were not ‘reasonable or defensible’, and 4301 detailed investigations dealt with which could mean around 340 similarly defective final decisions. These numbers are open to a certain amount of error because we don’t know if the decision statements are truly randomly sampled and the sample size is small compared to the total number of complaints. The actual number of ‘wrong’ decision statements could be bigger or smaller.
The LGSCO is getting a comparable percentage of decisions ‘wrong’ each year. In 21-22 it was 9 percent, in 20-21 it was 15 percent and in 19-20 between 4-10 percent. These equate to significant numbers of complaints ‘wrongly’ decided.
Senior staff will sometimes re-open a complaint because the decision statement is found to be not ‘reasonable or defensible’ during the internal quality review process, although the criteria for doing so is opaque. Unfortunately, the LGSCO won’t re-open a decision when a complainant thinks it has misunderstood the complaint or got the law wrong. There is no right of appeal against LGSCO decisions, only a narrow right to request a review – the two criteria being when evidence is subsequently provided by the complainant that shows the decision was based on demonstrably inaccurate facts, or that new evidence has come to light which was not previously available. Faced with a decision that a complainant thinks is ‘wrong’, the only option available is judicial review, which will require legal advice and some funding. (3)
This really does give pause for thought.
Corrections
The footnotes were moved to the end of the article and penultimate paragraph was edited for clarity on [27/02/2024].
1 – P15 see section: Quality of our decision statements – internal reviews
2 – ‘Reasonable and defensible’ is a high bar because it suggests that only decision statements that are unreasonable or indefensible will be flagged, which is a higher test than, say, decisions that contain non-insignificant errors.
3 – Legal Help may be available to cover most of the cost.
This does not surprise me, up until April 2013 l was allowed keep my SDP and disability living Allowance, (l am on pension credit) then due to a short fall in Government funding all my DLA and SDP was taken in charges.
According to Norfolk County Council, a judicial review in December 2020, does not apply to me as l am a pensioner and not working class, so unless everyone is sacked, and persons of common sense bought in, things will get worse and then it won’t only be homes rapidly built, but also workhouses.
This also does not surprise me. It has been noticed that since the retirement of Michael King, there seems to be an increase in cases that are simply not investigated due to being ‘out of time’. This is very unfair when a council delays the complaints procedure enough so that when the person complaining arrives at the Ombudsman stage, their case is dismissed on this basis. Cases that should have been reasonably considered to have good reason for delay and contain significant injustices are simply turned down. It is not good enough to leave people unjustly affected and often disadvantaged without proper recourse, when there is good reason for delay. I have had a recent case where a council has flouted their duty at every step, blatantly and has used an unlawful policy and the LGSCO has declined to investigate. The complainant is financially disadvantaged and will continue to be. She has been unjustly treated by both council and now Ombudsman. It has been wondered in my area if the increase in not investigating cases is due in part to councils being bankrupt. It is extremely unfair for the Ombudsman to insist on following the council complaints procedure and when the process is delayed by the council, the case is not investigated due to being out of time. The LGSCO Ombudsman needs to do better!!