Not Fit for Purpose
I made a complaint about the City of Doncaster Council's failure to supply me, as an LPA, with a capacity assessment that they claimed to possess under their duties to supply information under Section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. I saw that the LGO had incorrectly ruled that a complaint made by another service user that they had not been supplied information to assist them as as a carer could be investigated by the Information Commissioners Office (the ICO). I therefore clearly stated to the LGO that this was not the case. I had made a complaint to the council who refused to respond to it claiming it could only be sent to the ICO. I pointed out that the ICO could only deal with complaints about failures t supply information under the Data Protection Act 2018, GDPR, the FOI Act or the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR). Although the GDPR entitles a public body to share information where it is a public duty, it does not obligate the public body to share that data. The obligation comes from the separate legal duty, which in my case was the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Unlike the DPA 2018 and the GDPR, where there is a legal defence for not disclosing data requested as subject access requests, no such defence exists under section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 where it is clear the information could assist the carer or LPA with their duties. The ICO simply cannot investigate failures to comply with Mental Capacity Act 2005. Despite this being pointed out to them, the council still refused to look at my complaint. I then went to the LGO. Despite stating very clearly that I could not take my complaint to the ICO, the ICO recorded that the council had claimed that I had referred the complaint to the ICO and also claimed the ICO had deemed that the council had "acted appropriately" with regards to not providing me with the capacity assessment. I have had never made such a referral and the ICO, therefore, had never made such a finding. Unfortunately the ICO accepted this information as being factual without sharing it with me to comment on it first. The council, according to the LGO, had also claimed that I had been given a redacted version just after I had requested a copy of the capacity assessment. Again that was simply untrue. Rather than address the complaint, the council simply lied about it and the LGO rewarded them for doing so by deciding not to investigate the concerns further and closing the case. The LGO also made claims about how the ICO could look at such complaints that were clearly monstrously false and demonstrated an alarming misunderstanding of the role of the ICO. I wanted a copy of the assessment as I feared that they had lied about what they had assessed. When I finally got a copy of the assessment, well over 6 months after it had been conducted, my suspicions were born out. The assessment also contained evidence of abuse of my mother that I suspect the council were trying to hide. I complained that the council had not conducted the capacity assessment they had claimed to conduct and this complaint was upheld. The LGO also stated that I had been given a redacted copy of the assessment I had requested by the council and was only asking for an unredacted copy. I can only assume that the coucnil had lied about that as well. I had not been given a redacted copy. The LGO took this as fact and used it in additional grounds as to why they should not investigate.