Procedure for Internal Review of Wrongful Findings in Decision

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Local Government Ombudsmen,

please advise the next step in the process for when an LGO investigator has produced a report which:

1) is heavily biased towards the LA (in entire breach of the ombudsman statement about being impartial), unquestioningly believing their provably false claims, whilst conversely expecting the complainant to evidence every detail of their complaint, but relying as standard solely on documentation submitted by the LA and not requesting any evidence from the complainant (as confirmed by caseworker);

2) ignores serious and provable breaches of multiple laws by the LA, including criminal law, as well as serious maladministration (laws were referenced by complainant with clear related evidence and statements of where and how the laws were breached);

3) makes false statements (lies) in the final report;

4) ignores cast iron evidence supplied by the complainant and failed to request any evidence offered upon request as listed in a provided chronology of events and written evidence;

5) attempts to sidetrack the focus of the complaint and uses personal opinion to interpret events and statements which results in wrongful findings and in fact the International Ombudsman Institute states (http://www.theioi.org/the-i-o-i/about-th...

"The role of the ombudsman is to protect the people against violation of rights, abuse of powers, unfair decisions and maladministration. Ombudsman institutions play an increasingly important role in improving public administration while making the government's actions more open and its administration more accountable to the public." so it is very wrong that the caseworker claimed this, as she should have recognised such unfairness and abuse of power and the Commission for Local Administration in England states: "Councils and their staff may find it helpful to consider these principles. They are grouped below under eight headings: the law, policy, decisions, action prior to decision taking, administrative processes, customer relations, impartiality and fairness, and complaints." so the LGO should be investigating the LA in these matters and following similar principles itself in doing so;

6) making nonsensical statements that the outcome would not have been any different even if the LA had followed procedures, when those procedures result from Acts of Parliament and are therefore law and strict procedures have to be followed in law for the actions to have been valid at all and had evidence been paid attention to, the procedures could not have been instigated or progressed, letalone unlawfully so;

7) ignored strong evidence of malicious intent by the LA;

8) ignored serious harm caused to the complainant and family by the unlawful behaviour and actions of the LA;

9) repeatedly referred to the opinions of the LA employees as being something that the LGO cannot consider as relevant, when those opinions resulted in unlawful actions and are directly attributable as breaches of relevant laws, unfairness, abuse of power and maladministration;

10) ignored financial loss (including legal advice costs) caused to the complainant by the actions of the LA and opines that a simple apology is sufficient from the LA ignoring financial loss and harm to health and wellbeing caused by the LA.

I understand that in Parliamentary discussion the LGO has stated that in instances where a complainant requests a review of the decision, the deputy ombudsman looks into the caseworker's investigation and findings, as per this (please see Qs35-50 especially): https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm...

Can you confirm that it is the case that the deputy ombudsman in person will review the outcome of an investigation which has been conducted in a sub-standard manner, due to issues such as the above. If it is not the deputy ombudsman, please state the name and contact details of who it is and when the procedure changed from being the deputy ombudsman.

Please also confirm if it is possible to request a face-to-face meeting with the case reviewer as part of the process.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

A.E. left an annotation ()

I don't know if it could be made to apply here, perhaps it could in at least some cases, but for personal injury claims QOCS (qualified one-way costs shifting) means costs cannot be awarded against the claimant, or they cannot be awarded higher than the value of the claim, I believe.

Dear The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman,

please provide your response to this FOIA as it is overdue.

Yours faithfully,

A.E.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/4...

Foi Officer, The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

1 Attachment

This is to acknowledge receipt of your email. If you are making a request for information, you should get an acknowledgement from us within the next 2-3 days with a reference number and a date by which we will respond to your request. Please note, however, that this address is only for use in relation to requests for information made under the Freedom of Information Act and subject access requests made under the Data Protection Act. If your email is in relation to a new complaint please follow this link to a complaint form<http://www.lgo.org.uk/forms/ShowForm.asp...> or call 0300 061 0614 to speak to one of our Advisers, as the FOI Officer cannot deal with your complaint.

[another test with borders]

NOTICE - This message contains information intended only for the use of the addressee named above. If you have received this message in error please advise us at once and do not make any use of the information.

Foi Officer, The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

1 Attachment

  • Attachment

    RE Freedom of Information request ISO10002 Standards for LGO Investigations 17 096.txt

    2K Download View as HTML

Dear AE

You made a request on 26 September. I sent a reply on 3 October. You sent a follow up question on 4 October, to which I replied on the same day.
You then sent the attached email thanking me for my reply. What is it you believe I have not responded to?

Yours faithfully

Hilary Pook
Information & Records Manager | DL: 0330 403 4734 |
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman's office |
www.lgo.org.uk |

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Dear Foi Officer,

thank you for your reply of 17 November querying whether you had answered my questions, with an attachment (dated 04 Oct 2017 14:01:35 +0000) which states:

"Thank you for your reply:

"No organisation has responsibility for overseeing the quality of LGSCO complaint investigations. As it says on the ‘Challenging decisions’ page of our website, “Our decisions are final and there is no appeal. You can apply to the High Court to challenge an Ombudsman’s decision because it is legally flawed – this is called judicial review.”

However, the work of the Ombudsman’s office is scrutinised by the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

I thought I had answered your question: "I believe that the deputy ombudsman will evaluate the investigator's handling of the complaint, please confirm this is correct and how the process works" by explaining that we do not have a deputy ombudsman and sending you links to our website. However, if you want full details of the whole process, please see: http://www.lgo.org.uk/information-centre... (end quote).

My original questions were submitted on 20.9.17. At 16.11.17 I had received no response so sent a chaser and received an automatic acknowledgement. The only other response was your latest one of 17.11.17 with the above quoted attachment. I cannot find any reference on the FOIA to your reply of 3rd October or any further question that you state I made on 4th October. Perhaps you have confused my FOIA with someone else's?

Further, the link you provided in your attachment referenced above, contains a link which does not work (: http://www.lgo.org.uk/information-centre...).

Please therefore confirm, as the deputy ombudsman was referred to in the Parliamentary discussion I linked to in my original FOIA (https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/p...) and you state there is nobody in this position, who it is that deals with appeals. Is it the Ombusman Michael King? Please can you provide a working link to the process and if it does not contain Mr King's contact details, please provide them in your reply. Please also advise the situation when there are extenuating circumstances that make appealing within any set time frame.

Many thanks.

Yours sincerely,

A.E.

Foi Officer, The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

1 Attachment

This is to acknowledge receipt of your email.  If you are making a request
for information, you should get an acknowledgement from us within the next
2-3 days with a reference number and a date by which we will respond to
your request. Please note, however, that this address is only for use in
relation to requests for information made under the Freedom of Information
Act and subject access requests made under the Data Protection Act. If
your email is in relation to a new complaint please follow this link to a
[1]complaint form or call 0300 061 0614 to speak to one of our Advisers,
as the FOI Officer cannot deal with your complaint.

 

[2]another test with borders

 

NOTICE - This message contains information intended only for the use of
the addressee named above.  If you have received this message in error
please advise us at once and do not make any use of the information.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.lgo.org.uk/forms/ShowForm.asp...

Foi Officer, The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

15 Attachments

Dear AE

Please find attached a letter of today's date answering your queries below, plus all the previous correspondence we have had.

Yours faithfully

Hilary Pook
Information & Records Manager | DL: 0330 403 4734 |
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman's office |
www.lgo.org.uk |

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