LGO Parliamentary Committee review

[appropriatelytrained]

The Communities and Local Government Committee has launched an inquiry into the Local Government Ombudsman.

The committee said it would take oral evidence from the Ombudsman after Easter on its 2011 annual report and on its activities.

MPs on the committee have invited submissions from interested parties on the LGO?s work.

The CLG committee stressed that the inquiry would not look at individual cases considered or before the LGO, nor its handling of particular cases.

See here

I think these still leaves scope to raise concerns about a lack of guidance on general issues such as the failure to arrange provision and the organisation's understanding of the public law issues involved with its work, i.e. that it is a public body and can be held accountable and subject to the principles of judicial review like any other so its decisions must be reasoned and rational and comply with the law.

Agree, there is scope to raise concerns about the actual decision-making.

The inquiry seems to focus on jurisdiction, structure and governance - not the case work itself.

Yes, I agree. We could raise broad points about:

Failure to issue general guidance in key subjects of regulation - education
Failure to confirm status of guidance
Lack of power to set statutory guidance
Failure to understand public law duties to give reasoned decisions
Failure to look for constructive resolutions
Capacity to 'settle' without taking into account views of the complainant

etc etc

Well, they tried to 'settle' by saying there was no case to answer until I objected and they reviewed that decision. The outcome was that on most counts the LA were blameless but they did decide there was some maladministration so awarded me £250 and an apology from the LA.

They will try to pass the buck whenever possible. For example I was complaining about LA's failure to name any placement post-16. LGO's response - well, you'd lodged a SENDIST appeal against that.

Yes, true, but only because LA had not (as late as Aug in the year of transition) named any suitable placemnet for Sep. (And Tribunal hearing would be unlikely to take place until the following Feb/Mar).

Barking.

Something needs to be done. I have an LGO complaint that has been closed until the result of a tribunal is decided as although they agreed 3 possible counts of maladministration they wanted to wait the tribunal result to find out the injustice, tribunal is in a few days and LA have been late with providing a final working doc and maybe barred, yet.

It is outrageous.

The LGO should not be abdicating their statutory responsibilities to consider injustice to a Tribunal whose purpose is not to apply the same test in law.

Injustice is a very broad term and goes beyond 'educational failure' or even damage to educational chances. There is not statutory restriction which says it must be even of a certain level

I think that feeding themes into the review would be good but we can't be fact specific as the review won't look at cases. So we could identify general themes like abdicating decision-making to other bodies, not working within a human rights framework, the non-application of its own guidance.

I am just completing what is now a 38 page submission to the LGO and have learnt some very interesting facts about how it is supposed to act!!

Sounds good appropriately trained. I will be appealing the LGO descision but have this tribunal to get through first.

4th tribunal case (out of 2 children so far) - LA has backed down on 2 tribunals and went to tribunal but agreed to amendments at tribunal with 3rd and with the 4th it looks like they may be barred (due to maladminstration - suprisingly).

The transparency point is a good one Trying. I agree. Perhaps we should draw up a list?

I have done alot of piecing together of research from cases, guides, their site and other publications about:

the purpose of the ombudsman
maladministration/injustice
human rights framework

Having done so much work, it occurs to me that if the legal folk I have looking over this agree with what I say, I could try and publish in a journal and then EVERYONE would get access to it.

Wasuup - can they be barred for maladministration?

Yes they can be struck out for not complying with case directions appropriately.

They managed to take 11 months to produce a final statement from not opposing a tribunal case for a note in lieu (there is a supposed timeline of 5 weeks to do this if they back out of a tribunal case). Then took 4 months each time to produce amended statements (3). Now they have failed to keep to case direction timelines.....

Thanks tired. I think I am kind of used to it now. I am not even asking for ABA or anything complicated just that the statement is written properly.

Rule 8(4)(a) and (8) Tribunal
Procedure Rules 2008

I see - I thought you meant barred for an LGO determination of maladministration!

The tribunal and LGO are not connected processess although it is more evidence for the LGO of the LA's excellent paperwork organisation skills and performance.

I'm interested in putting together some submissions for this committee so PM me if you have any suggestions

What a disgrace?!

In our case, they tried to say there was no injustice to the child because who could say whether having his legal entitlements met would have changed the outcome - after a 5 month delay in provision!

Well, I think:

(i) Not having your entitlements met is in itself an injustice
(ii) being disabled and not having them met makes things worse potentially,
(iii) having to chase to have those entitlements met i another injustice in its own right

I also think:

(i) their investigations should rest on primary evidence (not second hand opinions) where possible
(ii) they should act promptly to avoid injustice.

Unless these oversight bodies start kicking bottoms and consistently saying to local authorities - WE DO NOT ACCEPT BREAKING THE LAW - there really is not much point in going to them.

I emailed the LGO about their failure to keep a record of a multi-agency meeting held in our absence (for Tribunal prep). The LGO say, yes we could deal with that as a failure to keep records. Really?? What is the chances they would do? Can you see yourself waiting for such a determination? What I see is, 5 months down the line, is them saying 'we accept they should keep records but heh they are a local authority so ergo there is no maladministration.....don't be daft!'

That's the logic they apply to the failure to arrange provision.

The LA have been at it again - submitted a response full of lies saying why they shouldn't be barred on Monday and did not copy us in. I rang SENDIST today to be told this. The LA are supposed to copy us into everything they send to SENDIST. Am having to write a response tonight pointing out their lies and lack of evidence ready to post first thing and the fact that again they have broken tribunal directions.

Thanks have sent written responses of to trunal with reports that are 4 years old showing my ds was 18 months behind developmentally then, along with reports and IEPs that cite his difficulties back then to highlight how slow the LA have been. Can't do anymore. One of the LA's witness's to talk to me on Monday to find out what they I want them to say to tribunal to support my son.....

Hi Appropriatelytrained and all,

Apoliogies for bringing this thread back to the subject of the LGO review, but I think that it is a fantastic idea to pool resources and make a set of coherent and compelling submissions to the committee in relation to this review. I am step-father to a child with severe dyslexia, ADHD and associated behavioural difficulties, and our family's life has been consumed by the process of trying just to get appropriate educational provision for him.

We live in North London in a borough that is very well known for having an appalling children's service. We have been to one tribunal, with the possibility of a second tribunal coming up, and have submitted a voluminous complaint to the LGO about the LA's conduct so far which has turned out to be a complete waste of time.

Our many complaints about the LGO fit broadly into the same categories as everyone elses: the investigator does not understand the law or the issues, let alone apply the law; the investigator reaches illogical conclusions on the basis of the available evidence; the investigator bends over backwards to seek evidence to support the LA's posiiton, including believing what are outright lies while at the same time actively avoiding the collection of evidence from witnesses supporting our position whom we invited the investigator to contact. I could go on, but I am sure you have all experienced it yourselves.

Things have got so bad, and I trust so few people who are paid to work with and educate my son that I routinely record all face to face conversations and meetings with the LA and anyone at the school because I know when I inevitably come to complaint about something, they will deny having said what they did in fact say. You really start to question your own sanity when faced by a corrupt system where all of the actors are in cahoots to achieve the opposite of what they say they are supposed to achieve. How much energy and resources must be wasted on this ridiculous charade? I myself, before being exposed to the SEN system would have thought myself a green ink nutter reading what I have just written. It is shocking that the system is so utterly corrupt and dysfunctional. I am a practising legal professional (although not in the SEN field), and I cannot see how anyone gets anywhere with the LGO because they do not appear to use reason and balance in reaching their decisions.

We have now been given two vastly different provisional views in relation to our first complaint to the LGO (two more are in the offing), the most recent of which (arrived at after a lengthy, last minute meeting with the LA officers about whom we complained, who have all along the way lied to us, the truibunal, our MP... everyone!) is so logically inconsistent and irrational we are seriously considering JRing the LGO because it is so galling that an independent adjudicator appears so transparently to be colluding in the outright corruption that is the hallmark of the SEN system in this country.

Like so much else where SEN law and SEN provision is involved, I cannot shake the sense of the inevitable futility of making any submissions to the committee's review, however, given that the law on SEN appears to be reasonably sound, the terible experiences of families touched by SEN seem to me largely due to the complete lack of any available effective enforcement mechanism. The system for enforcement is piecemeal and daunting (hell, I am scared at the prospect of a JR, so how non-legally trained parents feel, I can only image), and largely, for most people, ineffective: damage is often done by the time a family is successful at tribunal, the LGO are useless, and JR is rarely a viable option. We are pretty tenacious, but we've considered throwing in the towell on more than one occasion before now.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that it seems to me that any spare 'fight' that parents have after fighting for their own children should be directed at HIGHLIGHTING and PUBLICISING the injustice in the operation of enforcement mechanisms and campaigning for real and effective change there. If councils actually faced severe penalties for consistently and deliberately failing our children, they would soon stop.

We only have until 23 March to get submissions in. Has anyone started on this yet? I'd be happy to help in any way that I can.