Local Government Ombudsman
This page contains information on the Local Government Ombudsman, including:
What it does
Advantages and disadvantages
Which complaints are eligible and which are not?
When can complaints be made?
Cost
Timescale
Procedure
Outcomes
What it does
The Local Government Ombudsman for England (LGO) investigates complaints from members of the public about councils and some other authorities and organisations, including education admissions appeal panels and adult social care providers (such as care homes and home care providers). There are three ombudsmen for England, each covering a different geographical area. You can find out which ombudsman covers which area on the Local Government Ombudsman for England website.
If you have a new complaint, you should first contact the LGO Advice Team, which covers the whole of England. There is more information about this in the section on Procedure below.
The LGO can investigate complaints about most council functions, including:
- education (admissions, exclusions, special educational needs, transport)
- social services (for children and adults, including complaints from people who arrange and pay for their own adult social care)
- housing repairs, transfers and allocations, and other issues related to housing management
- Housing Benefit
- Council Tax
- planning and building control
The most common complaints in 2009-10 were about housing (20%), planning and building control (17%), education (12%) and transport and highways (10%). The percentage of complaints about adult social care increased to 6% following the introduction in April 2009 of the new statutory one-stage complaints process.
[Note: where this text refers to ‘councils’ it means all authorities and organisations the LGO can investigate.]
As of April 2010, the LGO can investigate unresolved complaints about schools. This widens the LGO's involvement in school-based complaints and disputes beyond special educational needs and admissions and potentially can include any internal matter such as a school's approach to discipline and the way uniform policies are enforced. This service is currently available in 14 local authority areas. Further details are available on the Local Government Ombudsman for England website.
Since October 2010 the LGO has taken on complaints about privately funded and arranged adult social care, dealing with private and non-profit providers.
Local government bodies in Scotland are covered by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman;
in Wales by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales;
and in Northern Ireland by the Northern Ireland Ombudsman.
From May 2008, complaints about councillors’ conduct in local government in England are handled by councils’ own standards committees.
The organisations covered by the LGO include local authorities, but not town or parish councils. For a full list of organisations, see the Local Government Ombudsman for England website.
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Advantages
- It is independent of the authorities and organisations it investigates
- The investigation is private
- It is free
- Its recommendations are almost always complied with
- It is possible to find out what happened - because investigators are able to inspect files and interview people as part of their investigation
- If the council is threatening action (such as recovery action by bailiffs for alleged arrears of Council Tax) the LGO can ask for this to be delayed until the investigation is complete
- A wide range of remedies is possible
- The LGO can look at a systemic problem within a council which may affect many individuals
- LGO reports can influence good practice and procedures within councils
- The process is not adversarial
Disadvantages
- The LGO is not usually suitable for urgent problems, as it can take time to get a decision - though it’s worth noting that over 50% of complaints are resolved within three months
- You need to make sure that using the LGO doesn’t mean that you are too late to apply for a judicial review – the deadlines are strict
- A complaint will not be investigated unless you have suffered an injustice from either maladministration or service failure by the council (see below)
- The LGO is the highest rung on the complaints ladder, so there is no external system for making an appeal against an ombudsman decision. Complaints about the LGO are dealt with by the ombudsmen themselves; the only way to challenge a decision by the LGO is to apply for a judicial review in the courts
It is worth bearing in mind that the ombudsman’s staff will usually try to resolve complaints informally at an early stage. If they find that the council is at fault, in most cases their priority will be to sort out your individual problem. This may mean that the LGO decides not to complete a full investigation and issue a public report. The decision whether to identify a poorly performing council is made by the LGO, not by you.
It is also important to be aware that the LGO is not a ‘consumer champion’. The LGO staff are impartial and are not ‘on your side’ unless and until they find evidence of fault by the council. The aim of the scheme is to remedy an injustice, but also to influence good practice by councils. The LGO says that it may be as important to find nothing has gone wrong as it is to find that something has gone wrong.
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Which complaints are eligible and which are not?
The ombudsman will investigate complaints where maladministration or service failure has caused injustice. What does this mean?
Maladministration refers to a fault in the way a council has made a decision, taken some action, or failed to take action. If you are not happy with a decision taken by the council, such as a decision about granting planning permission, the LGO cannot investigate this just because you do not agree with what the council has decided. The LGO can only investigate if there was maladministration in the way the decision was taken.
Examples of maladministration include:
- taking too long to take action or failing to take action
- not following its own policy or rules
- treating a complainant unfairly in relation to others
- broken promises
- not making a decision in the correct way, such as failing to take account of relevant considerations, or wrongly taking account of irrelevant ones
- giving wrong or misleading information
Maladministration is not the same as illegality; it has a potentially wider application. An action taken by a council might be legal but might be unfair or contrary to good practice, in which case it can be considered to be maladministration.
Service failure. The LGO can make a finding of ‘service failure’ even if there is no maladministration. This could involve failure in a service which it was the council’s function to provide, or failure to provide such a service. For example, if the council has arranged for contractors to make repairs in a council property, and the contractors just never turn up, the tenants will not get the service they are due. This would be a failure in a service which it was the council’s function to provide, and a complaint could be made to the ombudsman if the council do not deal with the problem appropriately.
Injustice. The service failure, decision or action must have also caused injustice to the complainant. An injustice might be financial loss, a delay in receiving a service, or distress. If the LGO considers that the injustice is very minor, they will not usually agree to investigate the complaint.
Complaints not covered by the scheme include:
- a complaint that has already been the subject of a court or tribunal action or an appeal to a Minister
- a complaint that could be the subject of a court or tribunal action or an appeal to a Minister - although the LGO has discretion to accept these cases where there are good reasons why the complainant should not take that route
- personnel issues
- some contractual and commercial matters
It is important to note that the ombudsman cannot accept a complaint if you have already started legal action against the council, or applied for a tribunal hearing in the case. Where court or tribunal action is an option, but has not yet been started, the ombudsman has discretion to decide whether or not to accept the case, depending on the circumstances.
For more information about this, have a look at What is maladministration? on this website.
Getting advice about your complaint: If you would like to talk to someone about whether the ombudsman can look at your complaint, the best thing to do is to phone the LGO Advice Team on 0300 061 0614 or 0845 602 1983. A member of the LGO staff will talk through your problem, and advise you on your options.
If you are an advisor, and you want to discuss a more complex case on behalf of your client, you can call this number, identify yourself as an advisor, and speak to an LGO investigator directly. You could also look at the LGO adviser guide on the LGO website.
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When can complaints be made?
Before you make a complaint to the LGO, you have to make your complaint to the council (or other organisation complained of) and give them a chance to put things right. If you are not happy with the organisation's response, or if they take too long to reply, you can then take the complaint to the LGO. The LGO thinks that more than twelve weeks is too long - it usually allows councils and other organisations it can investigate up to twelve weeks to deal with a complaint through all the stages of their own internal complaints procedure. If the problem is urgent, the LGO can take a complaint at an earlier stage. This could include:
- circumstances where time is crucial, such as in school admission complaints or where you are at risk of being made homeless
- if someone is particularly vulnerable due to their age, health or circumstances
- most education complaints
Complaints should normally be sent to the LGO within twelve months from the time you first knew about the problem, but if there are good reasons why it was not possible to make the complaint earlier, the LGO has discretion to consider complaints outside the time limit.
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Cost
The scheme is free.
When the LGO recommends that the council should pay compensation, they will take into account financial loss and other expenses. However, if you have taken legal advice in making your complaint, it’s worth noting that the LGO is unlikely to ask the council to pay any legal fees. This is because the LGO system is designed to be reasonably user-friendly, and they don’t consider that you need a legal adviser to make a complaint. However, Legal Aid may be available to eligible clients for advice in preparing a complaint.
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Timescale
A lot of complaints are ‘premature’ because they haven’t been to the council first, and the LGO refers these back to the council’s complaints procedure. If the complaint is urgent, the LGO will try to speed up this process.
In 2009-10, over half of all complaints were decided within thirteen weeks. This time was longer if a full investigation was needed, but 97% of all complaints were decided within a year.
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Procedure
The LGO Advice Team acts as the first point of contact for all complaints. You can call an advisor, who will listen to your problem, and say if the LGO can consider your complaint. If they can, the advisor will take down the details, explain how the LGO works, and tell you what will happen next. You can contact them on 0300 061 0614 or 0845 602 1983 from 8.30am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
Once the LGO has accepted your complaint, an investigator is assigned to the case. A copy of the complaint is usually sent to the council for comment. You won’t need to attend a formal hearing – the LGO investigator will take responsibility for investigating what happened.
The investigator may suggest to the council how they could put things right, or sometimes the council itself will make these suggestions. The LGO investigator will usually talk to the person who made the original complaint about this, and give advice about whether the offer is fair. But at the end of the day it is the LGO investigator who decides whether to stop the investigation because a satisfactory outcome has been achieved. Just over a quarter of complaints accepted by the LGO are resolved in this way.
There is some criticism of the LGO about this – critics feel that poor practice by local authorities can be swept under the carpet in this way. When complaints are resolved informally at an early stage, investigations are not completed, and reports criticising local authorities may not be published. But the LGO believes that serious problems with councils would get buried if too many reports were published, and it is more effective to issue fewer reports on cases which highlight serious failures. The LGO can also make a public ‘statement of reasons’ on cases that have not gone to full public report. How this will work in practice is yet to be seen – the 'statement of reasons' process is due to be introduced in 2010-11.
The LGO will stop investigating some cases because there is not enough evidence of injustice to the complainant as a direct consequence of the council’s actions. If this happens, the LGO will write to you to explain the reasons for the decision.
If the LGO finds evidence of maladministration, and a full investigation takes place, the investigator will talk to you about what happened, look through council files, and interview council staff. The LGO investigator can demand to see anything he or she considers relevant: the ombudsman has the same powers as the High Court to question witnesses and see documents.
Once the LGO decides to issue a public report, a draft statement of key facts about the complaint is issued. This is sent to you and to the council for comments. After this, the ombudsman gives his or her recommendations in the final report. Again, this is sent both to you and to the council.
Reports name the council, but not the complainant. They are usually sent to the press along with a press release, except in unusual cases – this might be where a complainant is very vulnerable and easily identifiable, and might be at risk if there was publicity. Reports are also put on the Local Government Ombudsman for England website.
The council is given three months to respond to a final report. If the council declines to take the action the LGO has recommended, or if there is excessive and unreasonable delay, the LGO issues a further report. If this further report is not complied with, the ombudsman can require the council to publish - and pay for publishing - a statement in the local press, giving details of the recommendations and stating why they were not complied with.
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Outcomes
The outcomes for complaints to the LGO in 2009-10 were:
- In 46% of the cases not enough evidence of maladministration was found, and the LGO did not produce a report
- In a further 26% of complaints, the LGO decided not to pursue the complaint for other reasons, such as there was insufficient alleged injustice, or the complainant decided to pursue the matter through the courts
- Around 27% of complaints were resolved through a ‘local settlement’, where LGO staff negotiate an agreement between the complainant and the local authority (this is up from last year)
- In fewer than 1% of cases (69 in total) the LGO published a report with a finding of maladministration causing injustice
During 2009-10, a remedy or settlement of some kind was recorded in 2,435 cases. These included:
- 1,397 payments of some kind
- 585 apologies
- 223 new hearings or appeals
- 220 commitments to review policies or procedures
The aim of the LGO remedy is to put the complainant in the position they would have been if no fault by the council had occurred, or to get as near to that as possible. For example, if there has been delay in paying your housing benefit, the council will have to backdate the amount owed, with interest.
The LGO has published the guidelines it uses when recommending appropriate remedies to councils. You can read the details in Guidance note 6: Remedies on the Local Government Ombudsman for England website. Ombudsman decisions do not set precedents, so you can’t rely on these guidelines to guarantee a result in a particular case, but they give you an idea of what you might expect. The guidelines state that compensation should take into account:
- money due to the complainant
- quantifiable loss
- loss of a non-monetary benefit
- loss of value
- lost opportunity
- distress
- time and trouble
- the effect of the complainant's own actions
Local settlements and recommendations made by the LGO are not legally binding. Nevertheless, the recommendations are usually complied with.
If the LGO completes and publishes a report after an investigation, you cannot appeal against it if you are not happy with the findings.
If the LGO investigator has decided to accept an offer from the council, or to stop the investigation because there is not enough evidence, then you can ask the LGO to reconsider the decision, but it is up to the LGO to decide whether to do this.
There is no external review of the LGO's decisions.
In 1,135 cases the complainant questioned the LGO decision. This is over 10% of the complaints taken on by the LGO over the year 2009-10. These customer complaints are reviewed by a senior member of staff not involved with the original complaint. In most of these complaints the original decision was confirmed, but in 30 cases a fuller or better explanation was needed. In 27 cases the investigation was re-launched because more information became available, and in 20 cases because of procedural error. Of complaints about service failure by the LGO, 18 were upheld.
In some cases you can apply for judicial review of the LGO. This is not an appeal against the LGO’s decision. To be successful in judicial review proceedings, you must show that the LGO made an error of law, or that the LGO’s decision was irrational. Judicial review applications are rarely successful – there were 13 applications for judicial review of an LGO decision in 2009-10. At the time of the annual report, 8 had been been refused permission by the court, 1 was granted permission but had then been withdrawn, and 4 are awaiting a court's decision.
Case digests of both reports and local settlements are available on the Local Government Ombudsman for England website. The LGO also publishes on this site:
- annual reviews from the LGO on the performance of each local authority
- the number of complaints made against individual authorities
- the number of settlements reached
- final reports published for each authority
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March 2011
Key websites
Local Government Ombudsman for England
