Lewisham Council has apologised over its failure to register and respond to a resident’s complaints about charges for her adult daughter’s care. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld the complaint, and the authority agreed to provide a response within one month.
The woman said she had sent complaint letters that were signed for in September and November 2025 but went unanswered. Her correspondence concerned what she described as errors in the charges for her daughter’s care, which she said had put her daughter at a financial disadvantage.
The council has accepted the ombudsman’s decision and apologised for any distress caused. The finding concerns its handling of the complaint, rather than a determination that the disputed care charges were wrong. The resident can return to the ombudsman over those charges if she remains dissatisfied with the council’s response.
Letters went unanswered
The resident’s complaint raised a practical problem: she had written to the council about a financial issue affecting her daughter, but had not received a response. The letters were signed for in September and November 2025, yet the authority did not register and answer her concerns.
Signing for correspondence and dealing with its contents are distinct steps. In this case, the complaint was not simply about whether letters had reached the council. It was about the absence of a registered complaint and a response addressing the issues the woman had raised.
The ombudsman said it would likely find the council at fault for not responding. It asked the authority to issue a complaint response within one month, and the council agreed to do so. That gives the resident a route towards an answer on the matter she originally brought to the council.
The available findings do not explain why the letters went unanswered. Nor do they establish whether the problem arose when the correspondence was received, when it should have been registered, or when a response should have been prepared. The confirmed failure is that the resident’s complaints were not dealt with.
Care charges remain disputed
The underlying issue is the woman’s allegation that there were errors in charging for her adult daughter’s care. She said those errors caused financial detriment. That remains her account of the dispute, not a finding that the council imposed incorrect charges.
Adult social care charging can involve decisions about what a person should contribute towards their support. For a family challenging a charge, a complaint response is an important opportunity to understand the council’s position and whether it accepts that anything needs to be corrected.
Here, the unanswered correspondence prevented the resident from receiving that explanation through the council’s complaints process. The ombudsman’s intervention addresses that procedural barrier. It does not, by itself, resolve the disagreement about the amount charged or establish what financial consequences followed.
No details of the disputed amounts, the care arrangements or any debt enforcement are established in the findings provided. The case should therefore not be read as a ruling on those matters. Its immediate significance is the requirement for the council to engage with the complaint it had not answered.
Council must respond
Lewisham’s acceptance of the decision means it has agreed to provide the missing complaint response within one month. Its apology acknowledges the distress associated with the handling of the matter, while the response is the practical step intended to move the resident’s concerns forward.
The distinction between an apology and an answer matters here. The apology addresses the council’s failure to deal with the correspondence. A complaint response must address the concerns the resident raised about her daughter’s care charges, allowing her to consider the authority’s explanation.
The next step is for the council to issue that response. If the resident remains dissatisfied, she can take the substantive dispute over the care charges back to the ombudsman. Whether the charges were incorrect, and whether any further action is needed, remains unresolved.
