Local Government Lawyer Insight February 2018 LocalGovernmentLawyer 8 Michael King took over as the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman in January last year, preceded by 12 years as deputy LGO. He started the role at an interesting time for local government and his is unlikely to be a quiet tenure in office against a backdrop of falling local authority resources and rising demand. His thirteen years with the LGO means that he has had plenty of time to see trends come and go. While the overall number of complaints and enquiries received by the Ombudsman has remained fairly stable (it was 19,000 in 2016-17), the uphold rate has risen sharply, from 46% to 54% in three years. Adult social care, education and children’s services complaints are forming an ever-greater proportion of the Ombudsman’s caseload, while matters such as planning complaints have dropped quite substantially, from nearly a third to just 13% last year. The clearest trend, however, is in the nature – and causes - of the complaints received by the Ombudsman, which have become increasingly complicated over time. “Local government has become pretty good at dealing with complaints at first instance, so the complaints that come through to us are increasingly complex, especially in relation to adult social care and children’s complaints which are becoming a greater proportion of our case load as each year passes,” King says. Almost all local authorities have had to make cuts to important services, but some have gone about it in a way that is more likely to attract complaints than others. A common source of problems, King says, is where authorities have developed overly general policies in response to budget cuts, which can lead to problems over eligibility for key services. King points to the number of successful school transport complaints as evidence of the issue. “The problem arises when blanket policies are applied that reduce the discretion of the authority to decide on eligibility or overlook the needs of people at the margins of their service delivery. So, an authority may introduce a policy around the provision of school transport which is perfectly lawful on one level, but fails to appreciate the needs of pupils with special educational needs.” The complexity of complaints is also driven by the growing complexity of service delivery arrangements, from outsourcing and shared services to STPs and combined authorities. These developments, King says, underline the need for the proper accountability and governance of service provision - and this is where local authority lawyers have an important role to play. “The complexity of delivery models from most local authorities is mind- boggling for the public, he says. “There is a huge level of challenge about how you build in proper accountability and proper governance models into these arrangements in a way that the staff, members and the public can understand. When things go wrong, who's responsible, who's accountable, and who's got the power to put things right? “There's a huge opportunity and a huge role for monitoring officers and for local government lawyers to make sure that, when their new constitutions are established, when their new arrangements are set up, that the proper accountability and proper governance models are put in place. Fig 5 Derek Bedlow speaks with the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Michael King, about his plans to improve communication with councils and the role of lawyers in ensuring the complaints process can improve local authority governance. Policing by consent “The complexity of delivery models from most local authorities is mind-boggling for the public. There is a huge level of challenge about how you build in proper accountability and proper governance models into these arrangements in a way that the staff, members and the public can understand.”