Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

The LGSCO handles complaints about: council services (housing, planning, adult social care, parking, council tax administration, children's services, education admissions), and adult social care providers (council and private). It does NOT cover NHS (use PHSO), schools that have completed admission appeals, courts, or central government departments. Complainants must first exhaust the council's own procedures and refer within 12 months. The Ombudsman can recommend apologies, financial payments (£100-£10,000+), corrective action, and service improvements. Recommendations are followed in 99%+ of cases.

In practice, the LGSCO is looking for two things together: fault in how the council acted, and injustice to you as a result. Fault means maladministration — delay, failing to follow its own policy or the law, giving wrong information, failing to consider relevant matters, or not explaining a decision. Injustice means the effect on you: money lost, care not provided, distress, time and trouble. A complaint that shows only a bad outcome you disagree with, without identifying the fault that produced it, is usually not upheld, because the Ombudsman cannot substitute its own judgement for a decision the council was entitled to make.

Worked example: a council takes eleven months to complete a Care Act assessment that should have been done promptly, during which a family pays privately for support. The daughter exhausts the council's two-stage complaints process, then complains to the LGSCO within twelve months of first knowing about the problem. She frames it as fault — unreasonable delay contrary to the statutory guidance, no interim provision, no explanation — and injustice — the fees paid, the strain on her mother, and the months of her own time. The Ombudsman recommends reimbursement of the fees, a payment for avoidable distress and time and trouble, an apology, and a service improvement so the council reviews its assessment waiting list.

The pitfalls are procedural. Go through the council's own complaints process first, or the Ombudsman will normally send you back. Complain within twelve months of when you first knew about the matter; late complaints are only accepted in limited circumstances. Some things are outside jurisdiction — school admission and exclusion appeals once heard by a panel, most personnel matters, and anything where you had a realistic right of appeal to a court or tribunal, such as a special educational needs decision, which belongs with the SEND Tribunal. And the Ombudsman cannot punish individual officers.

The LGSCO is the local government counterpart of the PHSO for the NHS and central government and the FOS for financial firms; where the decision itself is unlawful rather than badly made, judicial review may be the right route. Read our guides to the LGSCO process and complaining about your council.