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.

Great post - and welcome!

I would love to do something. I am knee-deep in annual review territory at the moment but could certainly use some of the material I have gathered for my LGO submissions against their provisional view.

Do PM me and perhaps we can put our thoughts together in a list! I have done submissions to Select Committees before and it would be good to perhaps give ourselves a 'name' so that we can be a proper group submitting these rather than a just disparate set of individuals.

What do you think? Any ideas?

I can try and work on this at the weekend.

That goes for anyone else - PM me with ideas.

Hi tiredoffightingwithjelly,

I am painfully aware of the costs risk of JR, which is why it is such a daunting prospect, particularly when any reccomendation of the LGO can just be ignored by a council anyway (prehaps a flaw to point out in any submissions the select committee). To be honest, maybe I was being somewhat fanciful in my original post. Realistically we would only proceed to JR if we could secure public funding to do so for and on behalf of Young Master SNFather, and then only if the costs risk would be mitigated by that course of action. Given that the complaint to the LGO was made in the name of my wife, albeit on stepson's behalf, I am not confident our idea is a workable ruse. i have insufficient public and administrative law knowledge to know myself!

In terms of a group JR about processes generally, I fear from what little I understand of the process that such a venture may fall fould of the need for the group to establich both sufficient standing AND adhere to the apparently strictly enforced time limit of 3 months from the date of the action giving rise to the claim for JR. It is something worth considerin, though.

Indeed - as a fellow legal professional I agree on JR but I think there are two things we can do:

1. Put our heads together and form a group to submit representations to this committee

1. Try and get other organisations involved in our LGO battles. I have a set of submissions to go to the LGO on their second provisional review of my son's case. I have prepared detailed legal argument (as if it were for JR) and I have several national organisations who may back them once my lawyer has looked over them.

My thoughts were then to try and draft an article for a legal journal or charity website repeating these arguments so they can be circulated and used by everyone.

tireoffightingwithjelly,

I appears as though I may be wrong in my concerns as to whether a group of likeminded people on an internet mesageboard with a personal interest in an issue would have sufficient standing to make a claim for JR. See property.practicallaw.com/9-385-9310 for what I understand to be a brief summary of the current law.

I really wish to shy away from making bold statements about SEN or public law, as this is not my area of expertise, and I am finding my way as much as many other parents on here.

If you are within the three months from the finding of maladaminstration, then as I understand things you could JR yourself, I just wasn't sure whether others could also say that they were within 3 months of such a finding.

Out of interest, you say you have a finding of maladministration. Why are you considering seeking JR or why are you otherwise dissatisfied. I ask you (and appropriatelytrained) because we too have a second provisional view which contains a finding of maladministration, but we are deeply dissatisfied because it the finding is insufficiently broad about the actions of the council, is logically inconsistent in that it doesn't find maladministration in the case of failure to arrange provision in spite of the fact that the provision plainly was not arranged, and the remedy suggested is frankly insulting given the nature, extent and duration of the maladministration. Oh, and the fact that where there are conflicting accounts between us and the council with no documentary evidence, they have said that there is nothing that they can do because they can never know who to believe! in the case of each such conflict, you will be surprised to learn, it is the council which benefits from the refusal to investigate further or hear from other corroborating witnesses who have been suggested by us.

appropriatelytrained,

I agree entirely with your point 1. I shall try to PM you later this evening to set out a few thoughts. As to 2 and your previous post, I think that this has to be the way forward. We have been fighting and fighting and fighting for 4 years now, and it is just pointless. One of the severe barriers to things is the lack of available resources (not that this is any substitute for having a process that works, of course).

Once the submissions have been prepared, I am happy to help in whatever way I can to achieve the aims you list.

SNFather, welcome to MN.

I'm afraid I disagree with your comment about lack of resources. The resources appear to be there but they are ineffective and appear to be allocated to defending against having to provide rather than training and empowering people who can make a difference I.e parents and TAs.

That has been my experience.

I am heading for my second tribunal for provision which is cheaper than the LA preferred and ineffective offering. There is a conflict of interest in being both the assessor of need and provider/commissioner of services.

StarlightDickenzie,

Hello. You misunderstand me - I am in complete agreement with you! When I said "How much energy and resources must be wasted on this ridiculous charade?" it was the misdirection of resources to exactly the kind of thing to which you refer that I was so frustrated by! In my view it is shocking that so much is wasted when it could be being spent on our children, many of whom desperately need it.

My LA publish figures on how much has been 'saved' through forcing parents to tribunal, whilst simultaneously failing to provide figures on how much their 'saving' has cost the tax payer.

They justify this by stating that the salaries of those 'defending' would have to be paid anyway so are zero cost. This justification to me seems more abou 'jobs for the boys' than it does about service delivery.

tiredoffightingwithjelly,

I completely understand what you are saying. Your experience of the LGO sounds alarmingly similar to our situation. I am so sorry that so many people's lives are so consumed with all of this nonsense. At least you (and the rest of us) will know that we areally are doing all we can to help our children.

I'll precede this post with the acknowledgement that I know that I can be dogged and determined, after all what self respecting parent of a vulnerable child isn't prepared to fight to the best of their ability for their child? In our case, I don't believe I am being blinkered when I say that even allowing for understandable human error and ineffeiciencies, and contributions to the problem by many non-LA parties, the situation in which my step son finds himself has been brought about by such shocking and inexcuseable wrong on the part of the LA that the LGO's findings of maladministration do feel just like being thrown a couple of pretty insulting scraps. It is also the fact that in order to secure the LGO's provisional view, I know that the very people who are paid every day to look after SEN children must have lied and lied and lied to the LGO investigator, just as they lied to us, and the LGOs investigator must be, to a degree, incompetent to believe what they say in the face of the evidence. I know that the LA will feel vindicated by all of this, and that they will continue to do it again and again until someone in authority has the courage to tell them that what they are doing is not acceptable.

You also make perfect sense when you acknowledge the fact that maladministration has been found, and that is something. It's just that it's so, so inadequate, and such a small part of the actual truth of what has happenned so far and is continuing to happen. Also, the two provisional views that we received couldn't have been more different (which I suppose shows that at least they are trying), yet, at the end, in spite of the second provisional view actually finding more fault on the part of the council, the suggested remedy remained the same (and was wholly inadequate redress). It feels as though the LGO fancies itself much more as a mediator than an adjudicator, and in special needs cases, I think that this is really counterproductive and contributed to children being failed by the system.

We were also disbelieveing when the investigator reversed her finding of failure to arrange provision because the council insisted that they did not know that the provision wasn't being made, even though we couldn't have been more clear that there were 5 people in a room with them when they were told that the provision would not be made, and that the council would have to arrange it. No allowance was apaprently made for the fact that if the council has a duty to arrange, it surely also has an implied duty to exercise due diligence that the provision is actually being made.

Funnily enough though , the thing that really made me blow my top was the fact that the LGO removed from the second provisional view (I suspect, at the requrest of the council) any recommendation that the council apologise to my stepson for its maladministration. One doesn't necessarily go to the LGO expecting financial compensation to really compensate for the wrongs of the council, but one does at least hope to be vindicated.

We too have another complaint or two to go to the LGO, becaus ethey told us nine moths ago that they would invetigate it as part of our first, and just now have changed their minds and now say that they wont. Nine. Months.

I could rant for ages about this, and not always coherently, so I shall stop!

StarlighDickenzie,

Agreed. The lack of joined up thinking in terms of the allocation of costs in the short AND long term is something that will really come and bite us on the collective behind in years to come :(

SNFather, lol, you're preaching to the converted.

I think it makes a difference to know that others have experienced the same even though at the same time the realisation the what was personal to you is in fact widespread is not comforting.

I have the added outrage of seeing the LGO categorically refuse to acknowledge maladministration in two provisional judgments on the same complaint while confirming my son was without provision for up to 5 months.

Their argument is - council did their best (although they don't refer to any evidence of what this means as there is nothing to show the council did anything bar sit back and wait) and what difference would it have made?

Really, these people have no idea of basic public law principles and the rights of children, including the rights of disabled children.

Would you take away a wheelchair from a child and say what difference does it make? No, but it's ok to take away the provision a child with more 'hidden' disabilities needs and leave him to it.