4:47pm Monday 19th July 2010
By Oliver Evans
MOST complaints about Buckinghamshire’s education authority were about grammar school admissions last year – but none were upheld.
The Local Government Ombudsman said 68 of the 97 complaints about Buckinghamshire County Council were about education.
And ‘most of these were about appeal hearings concerning applications to grammar schools’.
Yet it said: “Despite the high numbers of complaints received there were no findings or fault or local settlements.”
It founds notes of one hearing were ‘not as clear as they should have been’ and the wording of advice in literature was ‘misleading’. BCC did not agree but changed it.
The ombudsman – the ‘last resort’ for residents’ complaints – said the authority had been criticised for how it handled a case of child care.
It said: “One settlement concerned significant failings in assessment and planning for the care of the complainant’s children, which resulted in the complainant having to take legal action.
“I proposed a settlement involving compensation of £4,500; a contribution to legal costs of £3,000, and payments of £750 for the inconvenience and distress caused to the complainant, £250 for the time and trouble in pursuing the complaint and £250 to each of the children.
“In this case the Council readily accepted the settlement as proposed.”
Rulings were mostly in favour of all south Bucks councils, the LGO said today.
This included Wycombe District Council threatening a tenant with rent arrears after it failed to tell him his housing benefit had changed, putting him in the red. The debt was written off.
The authority paid out £75 to a resident who did not get a single occupant council tax discount for five months.
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