WARRINGTON Borough Council has been ordered to pay £500 in compensation after a family were left shocked due to receiving a £19,000 bill for a resident’s move to a care home.

Councillors and officers have discussed the review of Ombudsman complaints against the authority over 2018-19.

The highest number of complaints received, 12, was in the category of education and children’s services followed by eight relating to adult care services and six relating to benefits and council tax.

Five complaints were upheld but the council insists it ‘continually works’ to improve its processes and services when a problem arises.

A spokesman said: “We take all complaints seriously and complainants always have the right to make representations to the Ombudsman if they are not satisfied once our internal complaints process is exhausted.”

An upheld complaint is where the Ombudsman has decided the council has been at fault in how it acted and that this fault may, or may not, have caused an injustice to the complainant, or where the council has accepted that it needs to remedy the complaint before the Ombudsman makes a finding on fault.

If the Ombudsman has decided there was fault and it caused an injustice to the complainant, usually it will have recommended the council takes some action to address it.

On one of the upheld complaints against the council, in the area of adult social care, the authority was found to have failed to provide information about the potential costs of a permanent move to a residential care home and delayed completing a financial assessment.

A description of the complaint states the complainant’s family were ‘under the impression the placement was fully funded’, so were ‘shocked’ to receive an invoice 10 months later for almost £19,000.

The Ombudsman said care fees are rightly due but, due to the delay, the council should offer payment in instalments.

The council has also been ordered to pay £500 to acknowledge the ‘distress, time and trouble’ caused.

The spokesman said: “We work closely with NHS partners and are confident that we have a robust process in place, where very few mistakes are made, to ensure discharge from hospital is as smooth a transition as possible.

“However, we accept compensation was appropriate in this instance where we got it wrong.”

In relation to another upheld complaint, in the area of benefits and council tax, the complainant stated the council ‘took action’ to recover an overpayment of benefits – despite a bankruptcy order having been obtained at court.

The Ombudsman found the council was at fault in taking recovery action once it knew of the bankruptcy order.

However, it has ‘substantively remedied’ the issue by refunding the sum recovered. It has also issued an apology.