“During the year there was a case where the council’s handling of a particular complaint was extremely poor”
More evidence, that the York Council had become seriously dysfunctional by the end of last year, has been provided in the annual report from the Local Government Ombudsman
The organisation received 91 complaints about the York Council during the year ending March 2015.
Of thes,e 10 were upheld with 35 referred back to the Council for local resolution
The majority of the complaints concerned planning, transport, benefits, adult social care and environmental issues.
One case prompted the Ombudsman to label the Councils response as “extremely poor”
The report says that it took “emails, phone calls and finally two threats of a public interest report (sent by special delivery) to see any action taken”.
The complaint related to social care and the York Council, having accepted it was at fault in December 2013, took until October 2014 to remedy the complaint.
The Ombudsman’s letter was sent to the York Council on 18th June 2015 but has not yet been scheduled for cosideration by any of its committees.
There is likely. in the future, to be a single Ombudsman’s office covering all public administration organisations.
Hopefully the new organisation will also have a role in relation to the growing number of Quangos being established in York and elsewhere. Residents, who at least partly fund organisations like “Make it York”, York Museums Trust and York Libraries, need to have a route to independent arbitration if they are unable to get a local resolution for a problem.