North Northamptonshire Council paid out £40,000 last year to compensate residents who complained about service failures to watchdog
North Northants Council (NNC) was ordered to pay out more than £40,000 last year to compensate residents who complained about service failures to the local government watchdog.
More complaints about NNC services were made to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) in 2024/25, with education and children’s services grievances topping the list.
The ombudsman is a body that investigates complaints made against councils to help resolve issues in a range of areas, including adult social care, housing and planning decisions.
In total, the council received 119 complaints in 2024/25, compared to 101 the previous year. This has consistently risen each year and more than doubled from the number four years ago, when just 55 complaints were logged.
Of the 119 complaints received, 19 were upheld – up from 17 the previous year. According to the report, NNC was ordered to pay out £43,350 to complainants to remedy its failures.
Almost three-quarters of complaints upheld by the ombudsman were in education and children’s services, mainly relating to faults in special educational needs provision and delays in issuing care assessment plans.
The rest were made up of adult care services, environmental services and public protection and housing.
Speaking at an audit meeting on Monday (September 29), Simon Mills, assistant director of customer experience at NNC, said there was an increase of 144 per cent in terms of ombudsman approaches for the children and education area since 2021.
However, he added that this was consistent with a national surge in complaints due to external pressures.
Further delays in response and remedies
In a letter written to NNC, the LGSCO called the authority out for only completing a third of case recommendations within the agreed timescales.
It added that it was ‘particularly disappointing’ that this is the third consecutive year that timely responses and remedial action have been an issue for NNC.
The LGSCO chairman wrote: “Most of the delays involved payments being made to complainants. These should be straightforward to administer, and delay can cause additional frustration to complainants.
“The theme of delay continues and there were several occasions when our investigations were delayed by your council’s failure to respond in a timely way to our requests for information.
"The quality of some responses was also poor, with documents missing or questions not answered.”
Independent member on the audit panel, Michael Whitworth, raised concerns about delays in the council paying out to affected families.
He said: “These are the most vulnerable people and if we are delaying the [education] plans for whatever reason, then delaying payments it’s just compounding it. That is a massive safeguarding issue and something will happen unless we tighten up.”
NNC has said it will share the ombudsman findings with services affected, identifying and agreeing on actions and outcomes.
It has also said that, following the rollout of the digital complaints case management system to MP constituency offices in October, it will conduct a self-assessment of its complaint handling.