The Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman reprimands LBWF over its complaints handling, citing ‘unacceptable’ delays, ‘poor quality, incomplete responses’, and waste of staff time

Every year, the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman sends each council a review letter which contains some tailored observations about their complaints handling.

The review letter for 2024-25 just sent to LBWF, specifically CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan, includes the following:

‘During the year, there were several occasions when our investigations were delayed by your Council’s failure to respond in a timely way to our requests for information. In one case the delays were such that we took the unusual step of threatening to issue a witness summons before we received the information we needed. This is not a step we take lightly. In addition to the delays, there were instances of poor quality, incomplete responses to our enquiries or draft decisions, which meant my staff spent time chasing additional information…

I welcome that your Council agreed to, and implemented, the recommendations we made in 16 cases during the year. However, it is disappointing that in five of those cases recommendations were not completed within the agreed timescales. It is particularly disappointing as this is the second consecutive year we have had to raise such concerns…

There were also some cases of delay in payments being made to complainants. Such actions should be straightforward to administer, but we have seen examples of complainants having to wait weeks longer than agreed before payments are received, causing them additional frustration. Such delays are unacceptable’.

To those who have struggled through the LBWF internal complaints procedure, and then taken their case to the Ombudsman and won, none of this will come as a surprise.

For everybody else, it’s an illuminating glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes, made all the more credible because it comes from an independent and reputable third party.

LBWF’s approach to complaints is revealed to be a blend of incompetence and arrogance, and once again is in stark contrast to its endlessly repeated mantra of putting residents first.

And worth stressing, too, is the fact that because LBWF’s approach generates so much needless correspondence, it wastes significant amounts of public money. 

Ms. Egan-Roberts (total annual remuneration including pension contributions, £262,747) is not shy of warning Town Hall staff about the council’s perilous financial circumstances, so why does she allow this kind of nonsense to go on?

Of course, this is by no means the first time a regulator has castigated LBWF over these kinds of failure.

For example, in 2024, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that:

1. LBWF had ‘erroneously’ processed a request [from a local resident] ‘under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) rather than the correct information access regime, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR)’, though ‘in this case, it should have been clear from the nature of the information being requested (asbestos pollution) that the correct information access regime was the EIR’;

2. LBWF’s dismissal of the same request as ‘vexatious’ was ‘neither reasonable nor appropriate’;

3. LBWF ‘could and should’ have ‘easily’ answered the request within 20 working days, rather than ‘waiting sixth months (and requiring intervention from the Commissioner) to do so’;

4. because of LBWF’s prevarication, ‘the Council and the Commissioner both had to expend significant time and resources on dealing with a matter that could have been resolved very quickly’;

5. LBWF sent two e-mails which were misleading; and

6. ‘Taken together the above errors and shortcomings show that the Council failed to apply the proper and due care and attention to dealing with this request’.

And the name of the LBWF officer who personally signed off every single piece of correspondence (letters and e-mails) which LBWF sent to the local resident about this case, and also dealt directly with the ICO?

Step forward Mr. Mark Hynes, Director of Governance and Law, and Monitoring Officer, that is, the very person in the Town Hall who is responsible for ensuring that LBWF runs properly and remains legally compliant!

For the full story, see the link, below.