SCN0703

Written evidence from Parental Submission 163a

 

 

HOW THE L.A. DEALT WITH OUR COMPLAINT

 

  1. The appeal against the LA’s refusal to amend A’s statement/EHCP was lodged in November 2016.

 

  1. As the L.A. had not recently assessed A, in the weeks after that we commissioned professional assessments of A, assuming that these would convince the LA that the refusal to amend was unreasonable and defied A’s parents’ rights to a choice of school under the Children Act 2004.  It also defied case law, in particular Haining vs Warrington.

 

  1. Our lawyers lodged a Level 1 complaint against the L.A. on 22 December 2016.

 

  1. We had discovered, from an analysis of DPA documents belatedly supplied to us, that the package the LA had put together cost some £20,000 p.a. more than the total fees for the Special School we had chosen.  This fact was conveyed by our barrister to the LA barrister in good time for the Tribunal.  Our barrister expected their barrister to concede.

 

  1. However, the L.A. refused, the Tribunal took place on 10 March 2017, and the LA conceded on the first afternoon of a two-day hearing.

 

  1. There was – from about that time – no permanent Complaints Manager, and we were forced, over a long period, to correspond with the LA’s CEO.  He authorised a Level 2 Complaint, and on 14 April 2017 an Independent Investigator and Independent Person were appointed.

 

  1. They did not visit the family until 7 July 2017.  The I.I. promised she would have a draft Record of Complaint for us in about a week.

 

  1. She then changed her mind and demanded, in September 2017, that I draft the Record of Complaint within a fortnight, or the complaint would fall.  It was delivered on 28 September 2017.

 

  1. The LA mislaid a crucial bundle of relevant papers – there was much correspondence about that through 2018 – the CEO was disputing the fact.  The Information Commissioner’s Office subsequently deemed him to have been mistaken.

 

  1. The I.I. did not make any substantial report until 27 February 2019. The whole process should have been wrapped up in 65 days.  It took her 22 months.  Her report was 269 pages in length, but she found only a single error of fact. 

 

  1. In her Report she claimed that she was not ‘permitted to investigate decisions made by the Tribunal Court or any associated or non-associated legalities…’ (§3.22). §2.5.2 of Getting the Best from Complaints is far more nuanced than she allows, and 2.5.3 states that we should have had a letter explaining the reason for this decision.  Neither she nor the LA shared any of this with us at the beginning of the process, nor after receiving my Record. Had she drafted the Record, as she had undertaken to do, the matter would not have arisen. 

 

  1. But the overarching point is that we were complaining not about what she called ‘legalities’ (the word does not appear in Getting the Best from Complaints), but about the decision to drive the case into the Tribunal.  The L.A. ignored the legal costs to both parties and the extra £20k a year the LEA’s chosen provision was going to cost them.  They ignored the unequivocal evidence that derives from the assessment of A.  (They did not try to assess A themselves until shortly before the Tribunal – A was on that occasion too violent for their Educational Psychologist to form a judgment.)  Anyone would agree that this was perverse.

 

  1. An Assistant Ombudsman eventually undertook an investigation.  He too felt unable to help: ‘Complaints 8 to 11, 13 to 21, 23 and 24 are matters which concern provision for A and either were or could have been considered by the SEND Tribunal. They are thus outside our jurisdiction’.  He did not address the defiance of the Children Act and relevant case law, and found no real fault with the delay.  I submit that excluding matters ‘that could have been considered ….’ is a very convenient systemic get-out.

 

  1. A is now flourishing at his special school.  But we think we were completely let down, and have been left severely out of pocket, by the LA, the Independent Investigator, and, now, the LGO.  The decisions defy both equity and reasonableness.

 

  1. Moreover, sending a dispute to a Tribunal seems to be a strategy that renders an LA safe from the complaints procedure and any ensuing investigation into that procedure by the LGO.

 

 

April 2019