By Andrew Topping, Local Democracy Reporter
Nottinghamshire County Council will start to “vigorously” challenge more complaints to the local government watchdog before decisions are upheld.
The authority’s governance and ethics committee met in December and agreed to meet the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
The meeting, which took place last month, came in response to a number of recent decisions made against the council.
This included a parent getting £200 in compensation over a complaint about nursery fees and charges, as well as several upheld decisions over social care in 2021 and 2022.
Most recently, the authority was also ordered to pay a parent nearly £3,000 after she was not moved onto the most beneficial travel allowance scheme when transporting her disabled child to school.
The December committee requested the meeting to discuss these decisions with the watchdog and to find ways to fight verdicts it doesn’t agree with.
The most recent committee, on February 22, heard the meeting was “useful and productive” and will lead to a change of approach at the authority.
Councillor Philip Owen (Con), the committee chairman, attended the watchdog meeting with his deputy Cllr Johno Lee (Con) and senior officers at the council.
In the most recent committee, Cllr Owen said: “We, as a council, need to challenge the projected and proposed decisions before they are actually finalised.
“I think we have perhaps been hesitant, reluctant, to challenge the findings at an earlier stage – but we’re going to do that now.
“If we disagree, we’re going to challenge vigorously and say we don’t agree.”
The council doesn’t always need to accept the outcome of complaints, such as having to pay financial compensation, Cllr Owens added.
“Looking back, there may have been a couple of cases where we may have wanted to at least have considered that,” he said.
The committee heard service directors will also be given oversight of all decisions relating to their departments that were upheld against the council.
This will mean they “own that decision” and can act upon it.
“That’s an important point to ensure any learning is embedded at a senior level and cascades down to the rest of the department,” Cllr Owen added.
“The ombudsman representative said we need to make sure we document things because, if we haven’t got that evidence, the ombudsman will believe the complainant as opposed to us.”
A council report reveals 73 per cent of all complaints made against the authority are upheld by the watchdog.
This is actually marginally below the national county council average of 77 per cent.
However, just five per cent of all complaints were successfully remedied before action from the ombudsman was required.
This is below the eight per cent average for comparable authorities and is an area the committee said the council must work on.
Read more:
Nurseries to be told how to invoice after council ordered to compensate mum over fees
County Council paid parent £3,000 after dispute over disabled child’s school travel support
Cllr Errol Henry (Lab), who represents Carlton West, welcomed the outcome of the meeting and said: “It seems like it was a crucial meeting because certain things came from it that I didn’t know we could do.”
Cllr Richard Butler (Con), who represents Cotgrave, added: “In the past, I’ve thought that, once something goes to the ombudsman, we can’t touch it and that’s it.
“This is a really interesting report and it’s really positive.”
