LG & SC Ombudsman Reviews 

The UK government never fails to disappoint. What a further pointless waste of tax payers hard earned money. It’s not worth wasting your time opening a case with the Ombudsman - it will not be pursued with any effect if at all. If you have been let down by the usual predictable abysmal local government services (if you can call it that), realistically there is NOTHING that can be done. This is the just world we live in thanks to the broken system that is the UK government.

Despite providing the Ombudsman with indisputable evidence that a council had deliberately lied and wasted £200,000.00 of valuable and much needed tax payers money they refused to take any action against the council. When I provided them with a document from a freedom of information request that proved that the council had lied in responses to the Ombudsman and had lied in writing to me for two years they refused to reopen their investigation. This is a typical example of their review process which is there for the sole purpose to back up the findings of the original investigator. The review is not looked at independently. Once they make their original decision they refuse to engage with you despite indisputable evidence. I asked Andrew Hobley for his chief executive details as I wanted to make a complaint re his conduct and he refused to provide the information. So here we have an organisation that is tasked with investigating complaints that will not register complaints against its own member of staff. This is a pointless process because regardless of what evidence you provide they are not prepared to take action against local authorities despite indisputable evidence of lies and waste of £200,000.00. In a cost of living crisis how can they fail to take any action?

Only open two days a week which isn't helpful

If I could the rating would be 0. i have a complaint with care home in Leeds, my father had a fall in the care 2 times and was there for 9 days, on the 8th day he had a serious fall and no care was provided, the care home seeked no medical help until the following day. THE CONSULTANT who specialises in the field called and simply told me my dad had such a serious fall he will pass. i went to leeds social care care home who were nasty made lots of errors when questioned simply said this is a learning for them. how many more people need to die!!! i then went to LGO and spoke to MRS X who was rude ignorant and shouted at me, no empathy. i was offered an apology from the parties involved & £300 as per LGO decision - i am going to paste there response as they are all into this together!!!!! i should not say but i pray they also have this experience in their life!!!! PLEASE AVOID AT ALL CISTS AS THEY WILL NOT BACK YOU THEY ONLY BACK CARE HOMES AND SOCIAL SERVICES. I WILL PUBLISH THE LAST RESPONSE WITH ALL DETAILS AS YOU NEED TO SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT!!!

I am just going to keep this to the point because I can barely function and have been left permanently traumatised as a vulnerable female on Severe Disability. I saw that other reviews echo my own experience. They are ALL corrupt and liars. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman are meant to be impartial but they are a joke. I have had the past 6 years of torture against my human rights and civil liberties. Both mental and physical torture as well as street homelessness for complaining about bedbugs, being attacked by convicted criminals and Staff in my shared Council home. I recorded evidence, had witnesses and neighbours and smashed bedroom window. It is a miracle I am alive. I have seen EVERYTHING! Police not only cover this up, they target the vulnerable and they did just that to me, KNOWING I have no one else to turn to in crisis. I tried everything, CFO 151 Officer notice, Corrupt lying councillors, evidence of their council meeting minutes confirming this and one of my Licensee assailants mentioned in news as mugging the elderly with her Mother TWICE. The things that happened to me you could not make up! PURE EVIL and all including the MP are complicit. I had to flee the last dangerous property and self funded Hotels for 9 months until my back Severe Disability pay ran out! I even recorded Ombudsman call handlers being rude and hanging up on me, much like the obnoxious Council call handlers and evidence of a reference from two years ago they claimed did not exist! I have slept rough and I am on my last legs now. This is a VERY short and watered down shorter version. Mr. M Hyatt and G Earles, SHAME ON YOU!

Biased towards councils. Do not investigate in depth. Constantly side with Council despite evidence/ proof. Corrupt , cover ups & pointless bringing your case to them as they will always decide in the councils favour without fully seeing your side. Absolutely futile. Not even going to bother with stress from appealing. Disgusted. No wonder the majority give such a low score. They won't acknowledge this. Completely in denial & a service that does not serve residents, only governing bodies. Don't bother ! Councils getting away with poor level of service.

In line with the other Reviews - This is yet another really crappy Ombudsman service. They serve no useful purpose other than to serve as a buffer strip and Trade Union for incompetent County Councils. This LGO needs to be scrapped immediately, and the savings made ploughed-into something useful like paying proper wages to NHS staff. As for the LGO staff they are the pits and need to be sent down there in order to understand that their "soft" jobs have no reality, or send them to Rwanda ideally !

Totally pointless organisation! If you have a complaint with your local council, mine was Plymouth City Council, the LGO are meant to look into the complaint, however they are just as bad as any other of these so called Ombudsman's, a total waste of time, effort and money!
As they are supposedly independent, however they are not really totally independent, as my complaint had and has proved. My only other option is now to take Plymouth County Council to court for breaking their own lease.

Run by abusers to protect abusers.
Dishonesty is beyond gross. They bin evidence and recordings.
Make a Subject Access Request to see for yourself.

Wanted to complain about a negligent decision made by my LA, and their subsequent uninterest in my complaints. Tried to register with LGO to submit my complaint and the site said I was already registered. Asked for a reset and the site said I don't exist!!
I give up!!

Not rectifying the damage done to 1950s women over the (proven) maladministration of lack of notification of changes to their state pension age. Disgusting!!!

Independent and a Fair hearing was what I read I could expect from the LGO in Coventry when I complained about the Council placing a lighting column in a dangerous position at my home.
What I have experienced is rudeness, failure to accept my obvious evidence against the Council being at fault, accepting mistruths and unproven evidence from the Council, dragging out the complaint over 9 months instead of the recommended 3, lied to by an investigator and an assistant Ombudsman, and a refusal to escalate the problems I was receiving to a higher authority within the service i.e. The Ombudsman.

When it became obvious the LGO in conjunction with the Council were using tactics to belittle my complaint I told them to withdraw it before a final decision was made (I had read on an Ombudsman website I could do this) but the LGO refused to let me and went ahead with a final decision in the Councils favour.
They also refused to allow a review and placed a cut down abbreviated version of their decision in the LGO archives 6 days after making it, it should not have been put in until 6 WEEKS after.
There was an obvious urgency to get their unfair findings out to the public as I did not get to know until the day after it went public.

However, if it was in the interests of the public then why not give them the full details ?

The Council and the Ombudsman have refused to comment any further and are refusing to reply to requests under the FOI Act 2000.

There is very little point in having a FOI Act when these Government authorities have a FOI Officer employed to reply in a negative way to your requests in the same way that an insurance underwriter would get out of paying out in a claim because of hidden small print in the T & Cs.

Finally, a representative I have been in touch with over this matter informs me that the Council I am referring to is like dealing with a "nest of vipers" but I don't think that is fair on vipers.

Mr X (As the LGO prefers to call me)

Making a complaint through the LGSCO is a complete waste of time. The website and proccedures are confusing and very difficult to follow. I made a valid complaint to Devon county council which was dismissed with a generic email, so I contacted the LGSCO who wouldn't even bother investigating my case. My advice to anyone who is thinking about going to them is, don't bother.

Further Update

Yet again, the LGO stonewalls. I recently sent in a complaint of a really serious issue and they immediately closed the claim.

I had proof to submit and which they didn't ask for.

Another branch of the stonewalling regime that has presided in this country over the last fifteen or so years. The so-called party politics is fake veneer for the extremist legislation being incrementally nudged into this country under our noses...

One such consequence being that crime is only crime when committed by non public-servants.

Update

The LGO, after having closed the case (written about below) said that if I were to send in my complaints from ages past as sent to a certain branch of public-office then they would keep open/reopen the matter! No way! Shut up all the time!

Excitement high, as I look forward to sitting for many nights wading through what probably amounts to much over fifty emails scattered amongst hundreds of others (on top of the organised ones in designated folders), having to remind myself of the persistent nightmarish mistreatment in the form of excuses and (what appears to be) stonewalling, it soon becomes apparent that they wish to make this process as easy and as fun as possible.

Old Review

Bad government is when the state poses itself up against the population and treats it as inferior. Is the rough tide now going to turn from only the appearance of procedure...

I wrote in an urgent report to the LGO as we in the household are and have been potentially for many years undergoing methods utilised to inflict aggravation by some pests in the area, it quite clear that this same public-body wishes to fraudulently budge us from the house in order to make money from the sale, made evident by the actions of particular officials who constantly deflect attention away from the problems as if not very serious -

corruption, collusion, and further crimes linked to both the public 'services' for cover-ups -

...and how does the Local Government Ombudsman respond: they close the case.

Admittedly, I had not uploaded directly relevant emails out of a great many to sift through, and yet this was explained as being because I was currently sitting at the computer foraging through them whilst undergoing rumbling in the floorboards (the cause of motion sickness) aimed in our direction.

Each nuisance action has caused harm over the years, the claim submitted potentially of criminal injury.

Despite having been made aware of this, the case was closed without further invite to provide applicable supporting documents when not presently in discomfort from the nearby criminal-minded.

The LGO have been contacted before and were just as stonewalling to the point it becoming obvious that they are yet another organised-crime protection racket.

Maybe a change of hands in government as made up of those who make the point of actively standing against gangs might change things for the better.

Absolute waste of time, they misapply laws to the case, and didn't follow their own guidance regarding a child out of school due to anxiety. They have written guidance on this exact situation with specific guidelines. Apparently the council can do whatever they want, ignore professional evidence, and the lgo will back the council up as being lawful. Then place the blame back on the parent: that if I was unhappy I should have gone to tribunal (even though there wasn't time to do this, made no logical sense whatsoever) and because I didn't, this meant I was happy with what the council did. Literally, council's can do what they want, don't bother delivering statutory SEN provision, and the LGO do not even find fault and ignore their own guidelines. Mind blowing how useless LGO were. The investigator even changed her decision at the last minute. I did a FOI, and found she had forgotten to read all the evidence. I question why I bothered.

Completely gaslighted. They failed to follow their own proceedures, failed to share the LAs response to the complaint, stated their is no internal complaints system and no decision makers above them. The ignored both statute, case law and their own published guidance. Their responses can only be described as vindictive.

One star is one to many, minus zero is what the LGO get from me, absolute disgust and appalling organisation,and Croydon council are just as bad they haven't listen to our side of the story had an unbiased caseworker A.Johnson made a complaint and the complaint went back to the person we were complaining about go figure then had Ms Chappell again didn't listen and I've notice her name a few times within these complaints, they are not interested, my son has had nothing from education or from social services my story is very long so it would take a year to write it down, I've now found a solicitor and I'm looking into court proceeding against the council,the LGO and social services but I totally understand how they let people down innocent vunerable people who only have us to fight for them

Date of experience: November 07, 2022

COMPLAINED ABOUT SOUTH HOLLAND DISTRICT COUNCIL..

WAS TOLD THEY WOULD DECIDE THE MERITS OF THE COMPLAINTS. THEN DID NOTHING....CORRUPTED AND MALICE AFORETHOUGHT, ROTTEN ROTTEN ROTTEN ROTTEN ROTTEN IGNORANT BRUTAL VICIOUS SERVICE.

THEY SHOULD ALL BE SACKED FOR BEING AS CORRUPTED AS THE COUNCIL.

WITHOUT PREJUDICE AND MALICE AFORETHOUGHT.

NO STARS.