Family law guide
By Iblal Iqbal
Part of: Section 20 and Voluntary Accommodation: What Social Services Can and Cannot Do
The short answer Complaining about social services is not a letter into the void. Where a council’s children’s services work with your child, the law makes that council run a three-stage complaints procedure. Regulations fix its deadlines. You start it by putting your complaint in writing to the council’s complaints team rather than to the social worker (Children Act 1989, s.26(3)).
Stage 1 must answer you within 10 working days. You have to ask for Stage 2, which brings in an independent investigator. Stage 3 puts your case to a panel of three independent people. If the council still gets it wrong, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman looks at it.
“Every local authority shall establish a procedure for considering any representations (including any complaint)” — Children Act 1989, s.26(3)
This page covers England and Wales, because the procedure is not the same in each. In England it runs under the Children Act 1989 Representations Procedure (England) Regulations 2006, which “apply to England only” (reg 1(2)), and it has three stages. Wales works the same Act through the Representations Procedure (Wales) Regulations 2014, which “apply in relation to Wales” (reg 1(2)). They run two stages with no review panel and end at the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. The Welsh timetable is set out in full further down. Our children law specialists assist and advise people complaining about social services across England and Wales at every stage.
One scoping point before the detail, because it decides which statutory procedure you are in. This page is about complaints involving a council’s children’s services. Your complaint may instead be about an adult’s care and support, such as an elderly parent’s care package, a needs assessment or a care home placement. Even then, you are not left with the council’s discretion. England runs a second statutory procedure under the Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service Complaints (England) Regulations 2009. That gives you 12 months to complain (reg 12). It also puts the council under a duty to investigate “in a manner appropriate to resolve it speedily and efficiently”. The council must then respond in writing, normally inside a six-month relevant period (reg 14).
That adult route ends at the same Ombudsman. Welsh adult complaints run under the Social Services Complaints Procedure (Wales) Regulations 2014.
The hardest part is not the writing. It is working out which of the two procedures your situation belongs to. From the outside they look identical, yet only one of them has deadlines the council cannot move.
There are two, and the council will not always tell you which one it has put you in. The statutory children’s procedure exists because Parliament made every council build one. The Act says: “Every local authority shall establish a procedure for considering any representations (including any complaint)” about how it carries out its children’s functions (s.26(3)). Everything else goes into the council’s own general complaints policy, which the council writes, runs and can rewrite.
This is the single decision that changes the outcome. On the wrong route, a complaint that should reach an independent investigator inside 25 working days sits with a team manager instead. That manager answers to the same service you are unhappy with. People complaining about social services lose months to this and only discover it at the end, when the council says it has finished the procedure.
| What to look at | Statutory children’s procedure | The other routes |
|---|---|---|
| Where it comes from | Children Act 1989 s.26(3) and the 2006 Regulations. | For an adult’s care and support, statute: the 2009 Regulations in England, the 2014 Regulations in Wales. For anything else, the council’s own policy document. |
| Who can use it | Only the people listed in s.26(3): the child, a parent, anyone else with parental responsibility and a local authority foster parent. Also anyone the council accepts has a sufficient interest in the child’s welfare. | The adult route: the person affected, or someone acting on their behalf. A council’s general policy: anyone. |
| What it covers | Children in need, looked-after children, fostering, adoption support and special guardianship support. | Adult care and support, which has its own statutory procedure. Only what falls outside both goes to the council’s general policy. |
| Deadlines | Fixed by regulation. England: 10, 25 and 30 working days across three stages. Wales: 10 and 25 across two. | Adult social care in England: 12 months to complain (reg 12). A written response normally follows inside a six-month relevant period (reg 14). Under a council’s general policy: set by the council, and changeable by the council. |
| Who investigates at the second stage | An independent person the council must appoint. | The adult route runs one investigation rather than stages. Under a general policy, usually a council officer. |
| Is there a panel? | Yes. Three independent people at Stage 3. | No, in either. |
| Where it ends | The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. | The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. |
Before the stages, check which nation you are in. Everything from here to the Wales heading is the England procedure and its three stages. If your council is in Wales, go straight to the two-stage Welsh procedure. There is no review panel there, and a different ombudsman sits at the end.
One practical move settles it. Write to the complaints team and ask, in one line, which procedure they have registered your complaint under. Ask too what start date they are working to. If the answer is the general policy and you believe you are inside s.26(3), say so in writing before the clock gets any longer.
The list is in the Act itself, and it is wider than most people assume. Section 26(3) names the child who is looked after or in need, and a parent. It adds any person with parental responsibility who is not a parent, and any local authority foster parent. Then comes a catch-all: “such other person as the authority consider has a sufficient interest in the child’s welfare to warrant his representations being considered by them”.
Grandparents, step-parents, adult siblings and long-term carers get in through that last limb. It is also the one councils most often decline. Notice the wording: it turns on what the authority considers. So if you are relying on it, do not assume it and do not argue it in passing. State plainly who you are to the child and for how long. Then explain why your account of what happened matters to the child’s welfare. An unexplained sufficient-interest claim is easy to refuse. An explained one is much harder.
A child can complain in their own right. If they do, the council must arrange help for them, including “assistance by way of representation” (Children Act 1989, s.26A). That means an advocate, arranged at the council’s expense, and it is a duty rather than a favour. Parents complaining about social services do not get one, which is the practical asymmetry at the heart of this procedure.
The three stages that follow are the England procedure. The Welsh two-stage version comes further down. The council must “consider and try to resolve the representations as soon as is reasonably practicable and in any event within 10 working days of the start date” (reg 14). Where it considers the representations complex it may extend that, but only “by a maximum of 10 working days”. Twenty working days is therefore the outer edge of Stage 1, and there is no third extension.
Stage 1 is meant to be a conversation. Often it is a team manager ringing you, and sometimes that genuinely fixes the thing. The trap for anyone complaining about social services by phone is that a call leaves no record. If a manager agrees something on the phone, write it back to them the same day. Three lines will do: what you said, what they agreed, and by when. That email becomes your evidence at Stage 2 if the agreement quietly evaporates.
Ask the complaints team to confirm the start date in writing. It fixes the Stage 1 clock. A council that records the start date two weeks after you first complained makes its figures look better than your experience of them. It does not fix the rest, though, because each later stage runs from its own date. Stage 2 runs from the day the council receives your request to escalate (reg 17(4)). Your Stage 3 window runs from the day you receive the Stage 2 response (reg 18). The panel’s 30 days run from the day it receives your request (reg 19). Ask the council to confirm each one as you reach it.
This is the stage with real teeth, and you have to ask for it. The regulations are blunt about who takes part. The procedure “must include the appointment of an independent person”. The council also “must consider the representations under this regulation with the independent person” (reg 17). Its response is due within 25 working days of the start date.
Where the council cannot meet that, it must tell you the date by which it will have concluded. That date can be “no later than 65 working days from the start date”. Sixty-five working days is thirteen weeks. So treat 25 as the promise and 65 as the ceiling you should actually be watching.
Two things are worth doing before Stage 2 begins. First, ask the council to agree the statement of complaint with you in writing. The investigator answers the points on that list and nothing else, so a point you leave off it is never looked at. Second, ask who the independent person is and who employs them. They should be independent of the council. You have a right to know that before they start rather than after they report.
If the Stage 2 response does not resolve it, you can ask for a panel. The request “must be made within 20 working days of the date on which the complainant received the notice of the local authority’s response” (reg 18). Miss that window and the statutory route usually closes, which makes it the sharpest deadline on this page.
The panel is not a council committee. “The panel shall consist of three independent persons, one of whom will chair the panel”. The independent person from Stage 2 cannot sit on it (reg 19). It must meet within 30 working days of the council receiving your request. You may attend, and you may bring an advocate if the council has appointed one. You may also bring one other person of your choice, who can speak for you if you nominate them to.
What comes out of it is a recommendation, not an order. The panel sends its report within 5 working days of the meeting. The council then has 15 working days from receiving the recommendations to consider them. It must do that “together with the independent person appointed under regulation 17(2)”, and only then decide what it will do and send you its response (reg 20). The Stage 2 independent person sits in on that decision. That is worth knowing, because you can ask the council to evidence it. A council that rejects a recommendation has to say why. That refusal often becomes the single strongest document you can put in front of the Ombudsman.
The Stage 3 figures are worth seeing together. You get 20 working days to ask, the panel 30 to meet, 5 for its report and the council 15 to answer. That is 70 working days for Stage 3 alone, if every step runs to its limit. There is no equivalent stage in Wales, and the next section sets out what happens there instead.
Miss it and the statutory route usually closes for good, however strong your complaint was. If a Stage 2 response has landed, or you think one is close, talk it through before you decide whether to ask for a panel. After that window there is usually nothing left to ask for.
Wales runs the same Act through different regulations, and the difference is not cosmetic. There are two stages instead of three. So there is no panel to fall back on, and the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales comes into view much sooner. Complaints about Children Act 1989 functions are “representations” under the Representations Procedure (Wales) Regulations 2014. Complaints about care and support functions under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 run under the Social Services Complaints Procedure (Wales) Regulations 2014. Both follow the same two-stage timetable, set out below.
Two consequences follow, and both change what you should do first. First, a Welsh complaint reaches its ceiling faster. The formal investigation report is the last word the council will give you. So the written record you agree at the start of that stage sets the whole of the investigation, with no panel later to widen it. Second, the Ombudsman’s year runs from when you first had notice of the matter, not from when the council finishes. As a result, a Welsh complaint that drifts can lose the Ombudsman while it still sits on a desk in the council.
Who may complain is the same in both nations, because section 26(3) extends to England and Wales. What differs is the machinery underneath. You may not be sure which nation’s procedure your council is running. Or you may not know whether you are making a representation under the 1989 Act or a complaint under the 2014 Act. Put that question to a specialist before you send anything. The answer fixes every deadline that follows, and it is expensive to correct afterwards.
Two limits close this route, and both catch people who were right on the substance. The first is time. A complainant “must make his representations about a matter no later than one year after the grounds to make the representations arose” (reg 9). The council may take a late one, but only where it would be unreasonable to expect you to have complained in time. It must also still be possible to consider the complaint effectively and fairly. You need both limbs, and the second gets harder every month as staff move on and memories fade. In Wales the equivalent limit is 12 months from the date the matter happened, or from when it came to your notice if later. The same kind of discretion to accept a late one applies (2014 Regulations, reg 13).
The second is other proceedings. A council must not consider representations where doing so would prejudice any of these (reg 8):
That is a pause, not a permanent bar. Once those matters end or stop, you can put the representations back in. The council must then run them through the procedure. The pause does not buy unlimited time, though. You must resubmit “no later than one year after the concurrent consideration is discontinued or completed” (reg 8(5)). That is the deadline people miss after a long case finally ends.
Some subject matter sits outside the statutory procedure altogether. The Ombudsman’s own guidance on this route records that it does not cover complaints about child protection or safeguarding. Nor does it cover how a council assesses families and prepares reports for the court in private proceedings “(known as Section 7 or 37 reports)” (Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman).
Read that exclusion carefully, because it is wider than it looks. The exclusion names a section 37 report. So a complaint about how the council carried one out cannot go through the statutory children’s procedure at all. That does not leave you with nowhere to go. The Ombudsman’s guidance says such complaints “may be dealt with under the council’s own complaints procedure”. It adds that councils “should be clear about which procedure they are using, and why”. Where the report is already before a court, the more effective challenge is usually to the court that ordered it. The two are not alternatives, and you can do both. The same applies to the home visit that goes with it.
Your concern may be about enquiries into a child’s safety. If so, our guides to the section 47 report and to a social services investigation explain what those processes are and where the pressure points sit. If you are unhappy with Cafcass rather than the council, that has its own route entirely. Our guide covers Cafcass complaints.
One more piece of leverage almost nobody uses. Every council must keep a record of each representation and its outcome. The record must show “whether there was compliance with the time limits specified in these Regulations”. The council must also compile a report each year on how the procedure ran (reg 13). Many councils publish that report. Where yours does not, ask for it, because the council holds it as recorded information. A council that has missed your deadlines while reporting good compliance figures has something it would rather not have to explain.
Not sure whether your complaint is in or out? Three decisions matter here: whether you are inside section 26(3), whether the one-year clock has already run, and whether a live case pauses it. All three are cheap to settle now and expensive to unpick later. Book a free initial consultation or call 0330 094 5880.
The complaints that get somewhere are short, dated and specific. The ones that fail are long, angry and general. The anger is not wrong. But a general complaint produces a general answer, and nobody can usefully challenge that.
When complaining about social services, keep the tone flat. A panel of three strangers will read it months later, looking for what happened and when. A calm chronology reads as more reliable than the same facts delivered with force.
You normally go there after the council’s own procedure has run. The Ombudsman must first be satisfied that the matter “has been brought, by or on behalf of the person affected, to the notice of the authority to which it relates and that that authority has been afforded a reasonable opportunity to investigate the matter and to respond”, unless the circumstances make that unreasonable to expect (Local Government Act 1974, s.26(5)). The Ombudsman’s own guidance says it “may accept a complaint early if, for example there are long delays in the process” (Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman).
There is a second clock, and it belongs to the Ombudsman rather than the council. You must normally complain within “the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which the person affected first had notice of the matter”. The Ombudsman has a discretion to take a late one (s.26B). In Wales a different ombudsman has its own clock. The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales allows one year from the day you first had notice of the matter (2019 Act, s.8).
Read that alongside how long the council may take. At their outer limits, the periods the regulations timetable come to 155 working days, or 31 weeks. Of those, 135 are the council’s and 20 are your own window to ask for a panel (reg 18). And 155 is not a ceiling. Nothing limits how long you may take to ask for Stage 2 (reg 15(2)). So real elapsed time runs longer while the Ombudsman’s twelve months keeps going. That is the reason to keep it moving.
Two limits are worth knowing before you pin your hopes on it. First, the Ombudsman cannot normally investigate where you have or had “a remedy by way of proceedings in any court of law”. The exception is where it is not reasonable to expect you to have used it (s.26(6)).
The second is what it will do if it finds something. Where the council has already run a proper Stage 2 and Stage 3, the Ombudsman’s stated approach is not to repeat the investigation. If it finds fault in how the council ran those stages, it “will normally ask it to hold those complaint stages again”. That is a real remedy, but a remedy about process. For anyone complaining about social services, what you put into Stage 2 therefore matters more than anything you can do afterwards.
Pick the route that matches your situation, then tick what is already true. The list shows you what the procedure will be looking for and where your gaps are. It does not write anything for you.
Answer the three questions above and this panel will tell you which deadline is running against you.
England. Three stages, and the timetable sits in regulations the council cannot rewrite. That means 10 working days at Stage 1, 25 at Stage 2, and a panel of three independent people at Stage 3.
Wales. Two stages, not three, and no panel (2014 Regulations, regs 17 and 20). After the formal investigation response, you go next to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. You have one year from the day you first had notice.
Statutory route. The law fixes your deadlines, not the council. In England the sharpest comes at the end. Your Stage 3 window is 20 working days from the Stage 2 response (reg 18). Book a consultation before it closes.
General policy route. You have no independent investigator and no panel here, and the council sets its own deadlines. A specialist can tell you whether you are actually inside section 26(3) and entitled to the statutory procedure.
Not sent yet. The outcome is still cheap to change. Stage 2 will later look only at what you set up now: the route you name, the start date you ask them to confirm and your numbered points.
Waiting. Ask the complaints team, in writing, to confirm your start date and your current stage. Every deadline runs from that date. A late-recorded start date is how a council’s figures end up better than your experience.
Stage 2 response received — a clock is already running. In England: 20 working days to ask for a panel, and missing it usually closes the statutory route for good. In Wales: no panel, so that response is the council’s final word and the next move is the Ombudsman.
There is no score here. Anything you cannot tick is worth settling before the complaint goes in rather than after. If two or three are still blank, put those to a specialist first.
Those judgement calls turn on the detail of your situation. They are far easier to get right before the council logs the complaint than after a Stage 2 report has landed.
Book a free initial consultation
One of our specialists will give you initial advice on your situation.
Almost none of the damage comes from the substance. It comes from the handling.
If your complaint sits alongside something bigger, read it in context. Our guides to a child and family assessment, a child protection conference, a pre-proceedings letter and safeguarding referrals from a school each cover a process that may run beside it.
Our specialists assist and advise from the first conversation. They work out which of the two procedures your situation belongs to, because that decision shapes everything after it. They also explain what the council must actually do once it logs your complaint.
Together you turn what happened into numbered, dated points a stranger can follow. They also say plainly which of your concerns the statutory route can reach and which it cannot. Your complaint may sit alongside a live case about your child. If so, a specialist will tell you how the two interact before you send anything, because people most often get that part wrong on their own.
A free initial consultation is a conversation with a specialist, who gives you initial advice on your circumstances. It does not include drafting or reviewing documents. On this page that exclusion bites in one specific place. The statement of complaint agreed before Stage 2 decides what an investigator may look at. Drafting or checking that list line by line is chargeable work, quoted before it starts. Our guide to what family law costs and how to manage it explains how we price it. Before the call, note the dates of the two or three things that concern you most. Gather any letters from the council, and the date you first raised it with them.
In writing, to the council’s complaints team rather than to the social worker. If children’s services work with your child, say that you are making representations under section 26(3) of the Children Act 1989. Number and date your points, and say what you want put right. Then ask the team to confirm the start date and which procedure it has registered your complaint under. The regulations measure every deadline from that date.
Yes. In England you have one year from when the grounds arose. In Wales you have 12 months from when the matter happened, or from when it came to your notice if later. A council may accept a late complaint, but only if it would have been unreasonable to expect you to complain in time. It must also still be able to investigate effectively and fairly, and that second limb gets harder every month.
No, and the difference matters. Wales runs two stages rather than three. First comes a local resolution discussion within 10 working days. Then a formal investigation, answered within 25 working days of its own start date. There is no review panel, so the council’s investigation response is its last word. The next step is the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, within one year of the day you first had notice. The full Welsh timetable, including the six-month backstop, is set out above.
Sometimes not. Where considering it would prejudice court, disciplinary or criminal proceedings, the council must not run it. But that is a pause, not a bar. Once those matters end or stop, you can put the representations back in. You have one year from that day to do it (reg 8(5)). People complaining about social services who wait for a long case to finish, and then wait again, are the ones who lose the route.
At Stage 1 the council itself, usually a manager inside the same service. From Stage 2 the council must appoint an independent person. At Stage 3 in England, a panel of three takes over. Ask who the independent person is, and who employs them, before the investigation begins rather than after it reports.
Usually not: the council has to have had a reasonable opportunity to investigate and respond first. The Ombudsman does say it may accept a complaint early where, for example, there have been long delays. So finish the council’s stages and keep a dated record of every delay. Early referral may yet turn out to be the right move.
It looks at whether the council got the process right. Where the stages have already run, it will normally ask the council to hold them again rather than re-decide what happened. That is why the quality of what you put into Stage 2 matters more than anything afterwards. It also cannot normally investigate where you have or had a remedy in a court of law.
Yes, and they get help you do not. Section 26A makes every council arrange assistance for a child making representations. That includes “assistance by way of representation”, which in practice means an advocate at the council’s expense. Where the complaint is really about the child’s own experience rather than yours, that route often proves the stronger one.
Not through this route: a child protection conference sits inside the excluded safeguarding category. Three different doors exist instead, and which you need depends on what you want changed. If you are unhappy with the plan itself, that goes to the independent conference chair through the council’s dispute-resolution process. A factual error about you is a record correction. Anything else may go to the council’s own complaints procedure. It is worth taking advice before you send a complaint the council will simply refuse.
Complaining about social services through a procedure Parliament built is not evidence of anything against you. A council that treated it as such would hand you a second complaint. The real risk is practical: a complaint that absorbs all your attention while decisions about your child move on without you. Run them in parallel, keep the complaint short and factual, and take advice early about how the two fit together.
People complaining about social services spend their energy on the first letter. They spend almost none on the statement of complaint agreed before Stage 2. That is the wrong way round. The first letter only has to get you logged on the right procedure with a confirmed start date. The statement of complaint decides what an independent investigator may look at. Anything left off it comes back unanswered months later. By then the year in regulation 9 has usually gone. So write the first letter short, and spend the effort on the list.
Two things decide how this ends. One is the route the council registers your complaint under. The other is how tightly you write your points before Stage 2 begins. Both are far easier to get right at the start than to unpick after a Stage 2 report has landed. And you have one year from the day the grounds arose to start at all. Book a free initial consultation, and one of our specialists will give you initial advice on your options.
Book a free initial consultation or call 0330 094 5880
You can also read our guide to a social services investigation, or to the section 47 report.
General information about the procedure in England and Wales, not advice on your circumstances.
8 of 58 guides — scroll sideways for more
Child Custody Specialists
Applying for a Child Contact Order
Sibling Contact Orders: Protecting the Bond Between Brothers and Sisters
Shared Custody Arrangements
Lives With Order vs Spends Time With Order
Step Parent Responsibility
Non-Resident Father: Rights, Responsibilities and Next Steps
Special Guardianship Orders
Short videos from the Kabir Family Law team, explaining family law in plain English.
We are a team of legally trained family law and divorce specialists with years of experience across all areas of family law. We are not part of a firm of solicitors, do not undertake legal reserved activities unless permitted and are therefore entirely independent. Please subscribe to our mailing list.
![Prest v Petrodel [2013] UKSC 34: What It Really Decided](https://www.kabirfamilylaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Prest-v-Petrodel-1024x572.jpg)
![Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42: What It Decided](https://www.kabirfamilylaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Radmacher-v-Granatino-1024x572.jpg)
Type a topic to see the pages that cover it, or choose one below.
Or choose a topic
Or call us on 0330 094 5880
A few things we have shared lately. Plain answers, quiet updates, and the occasional reminder that you are not the first person to stand where you are standing.
Kabir Family Law, the start of the bright side of life.
View this Facebook post, opens in a new tab
When the roots are deep there is no reason to fear the wind.
View this Instagram post, opens in a new tab
Kabir Family Law brings hope to families in times of crisis.
View this X post, opens in a new tab
You are never truly alone. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is ask…
View this Facebook post, opens in a new tab
Would you rather talk it through with someone?
Book a free consultationThe first conversation with one of our family law specialists costs nothing.
12 Cathedral Rd
Pontcanna
Cardiff
CF11 9LJ
Friars House,
Coventry
CV1 2TE
Chester House
1st and 3rd Floors
81 - 83 Fulham High Street
Fulham
London
SW63JA
16 High Holborn
Holborn
London
WC1V6BX
Clavering House
Clavering Place
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear
NE1 3NG
20-30a Abington Street
Northampton
NN1 2JA
2 King St
Nottingham
NG1 2AS
1 & 3 Kings Meadow
Oxford
OX2 0DP
2 Copenhagen St
Worcester
WR1 2HB
Tower Court
3 Oakdale Road
North Yorkshire
York
YO30 4XL
You do not need the right words. Tell us what is happening, or pick whatever comes closest.
What is happening?