What is maladministration?
Because of the way they were set up, some ombudsmen (in particular the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) and the Housing Ombudsman) can only look at complaints about “maladministration causing injustice”.
This means that they can investigate complaints about how the council, the landlord or the government department has done something. But they cannot question what they have done simply because you do not agree with it. It also means that you must have suffered “injustice” as a result. It can be hard to define “maladministration” and “injustice”.
The LGO leaflet ‘How to complain to the LGO’ puts it like this: The law says the Ombudsman must look for ‘maladministration’ by a council that has caused you ‘injustice’. This means something that the council has done wrong, or failed to do, that has directly affected you. But we cannot question whether a council’s decision or action is right or wrong simply because you disagree with it, and we may not investigate your complaint if we decide that the injustice is only slight.
The law says an Ombudsman must look for ‘maladministration causing injustice’. But the law does not define "injustice" or "maladministration". Parliament left it for Ombudsmen to decide the meaning of the words.
When Parliament was debating the Bill to set up the Parliamentary Ombudsman in 1967, Richard Crossman said that maladministration included "bias, neglect, inattention, delay, incompetence, ineptitude, perversity, turpitude and so on".
In a court case in 1979 this was quoted with approval by Lord Denning, who particularly liked the ‘and so on’ at the end. He said: "It would be a long and interesting list, clearly open-ended, covering the manner in which a decision is reached or discretion is exercised..." The current LGO information for advisors states that maladministration can include:
- delay
- incorrect action or failure to take any action
- failure to follow procedures or the law
- failure to provide information
- inadequate record-keeping
- failure to investigate
- failure to reply
- misleading or inaccurate statements
- inadequate liaison
- inadequate consultation
- broken promises
An ombudsman does not usually criticise the merits of a decision which has been properly taken simply because someone may disagree with it. But he or she will look at the way the decision was made.
Injustice: There is no fixed definition of injustice, but it basically means that you must have been affected in some way by the maladministration. This could include:
- hurt feelings, distress, worry, or inconvenience
- loss of right or amenity
- not receiving a service
- financial loss or unnecessary expense
- time and trouble in pursuing a justified complaint
The injustice must arise from a fault by the organisation you are complaining about.
The two following case studies show what maladministration causing injustice might look like in practice. They are taken from the LGO website, which provides summaries of reports on complaints about education, benefits, housing, planning, social services and transport.
Social services for adults : This is a summary of a report by the LGO with a finding of maladministration causing injustice by Liverpool City Council.
The report can be found on the LGO website (reference 05/C/8592)
An elderly disabled man did not receive the home care services that an external agency was being paid to provide to meet his assessed needs. In her report, Anne Seex, the LGO, said that the care agency contracted to Liverpool City Council did not deliver care in accordance with the man’s care plan and that, although the Council was aware of the problem, it did not have the mechanism to resolve the problem of poor service provided by its agency. The Ombudsman said: “…this situation has the potential to put some of the most vulnerable members of the community at serious risk. It is simply unacceptable and constitutes maladministration.”
The Council accepted the faults identified by the Ombudsman, and had already taken action to address the agency service problem. It also agreed to monitor closely to see if the man’s care plan was being properly implemented, and make any changes necessary to ensure that it was done in future. It would also pay £700 compensation. ‘Mrs Lord’ had an elderly and disabled brother, ‘Mr Stone’ (these are not their real names) who received a care package from an agency under contract to the Council. In 2005, the care package broke down, leaving him with no care at all in April. The Council’s complaints procedure criticised the standard of care provided in the run up to April 2005. Mrs Lord said that, despite that previous criticism, the standard of care was still unsatisfactory. She complained that the Council had failed and was still failing to ensure that Mr Stone received home care to meet his assessed needs.
The Ombudsman found that the Council:
realised that the home care service to Mr Stone was inadequate but failed to improve it did not have an adequate system for making sure that the services specified in care plans were delivered did not check that the home care agency had provided the services for which it was being paid.
The Council accepted the failings that the Ombudsman pointed out.
To remedy the injustice, the Council:
made all officers aware of their responsibility to take action when home care services are failing and put in place a system for them to report such failures
ensured that new contracts for 2007 state that payments to an agency will depend on care plan tasks being completed.
The Council agreed to monitor closely the implementation of Mr Stone’s care plan and pay him £700 in recognition of the fact that he did not receive the services that he should have had from the end of September 2005 onwards.
Special educational needs: This is a summary of a report by the LGO with a finding of maladministration causing injustice by Northamptonshire County Council. The report can be found on the LGO website (reference 05/B/611)
‘Mr and Mrs Weston’s eldest daughter, ‘Joanne’, (not their real names) has Angelman’s syndrome and is severely disabled. She has learning difficulties, very little speech and a developmental age of around 2.5 years. Her parents made a number of complaints about how the Council handled Joanne’s needs, both educational and social services. The Ombudsman found that the Council failed to carry out a core assessment of Joanne’s needs between July 2001 and March 2004.
This failure was particularly significant in June 2003 when Joanne’s respite care was reduced. He also concluded that the Council failed to carry out a review of her needs on a six-monthly basis and did not carry out any reviews at all between July 2001 and June 2003. He further found that there was very little liaison between Children’s Services and the Education Department, with officers working in isolation from one another.
He concluded that a core assessment would have provided a much more detailed holistic assessment of Joanne’s needs and her parents’ wishes and needs. It would have helpfully fed into the delayed education transition process and perhaps have helped address her parents’ expectations regarding residential schooling at an earlier stage, as well as exploring in more depth other options for help. Joanne’s parents lost the opportunity to gain all the support that they and Joanne would have received had this comprehensive overview of their needs been provided.
He also concluded that a proper assessment may have prompted further investigation into Joanne’s scoliosis, which was serious enough by 2003 to significantly affect her posture and warrant surgery. The Ombudsman found maladministration causing injustice and recommended that the Council should pay £5,000 to Mr and Mrs Weston and £750 to Joanne to compensate for the injustice they have been caused, and for their time and trouble in pursuing their complaint with him.
October 2007