No sense of direction — geographic or moral — at Wandsworth Council in absurd SEND case

Most people can tell the difference between a quick walk to the corner shop and a 15-mile drive across London.

Not Wandsworth Council, it seems.

Officials made the same mistake not once, not twice, but three times before the Local Government Ombudsman finally stepped in. The case has now forced the council to apologise, retrain staff, and rewrite its policy after investigators found it had confused a disabled student’s new college with his old school and wrongly refused the family help with transport costs.

The story began in July 2024, when a father, referred to as Mr X, asked the council for help driving his son to college. The boy, known as D in official documents, has special educational needs and an Education, Health and Care Plan. He cannot travel independently, and his family live around fifteen miles from the nearest suitable college.

When D was at school, Wandsworth had helped with petrol costs. But when he moved into post-16 education, that support was suddenly withdrawn. Officials told Mr X the journey was only about two miles and that his family did not qualify for any further assistance.

That was wrong. The college was fifteen miles away. But the council insisted otherwise, despite an increasingly frustrated Dad trying to explain through not one but two levels of appeal. Each time, the council based its calculations on the distance to D’s old secondary school, not the new college he was actually attending.

It gets worse. Relying on that mistake, officials dismissed Mr X’s explanation that the family was on a low income and told him to “work together” with his partner to drive their son, as if the cost and effort were minor. In reality, he was spending £400 a month on petrol and struggling to keep up.

Series of failures

After months of correspondence and two failed appeals, Mr X had had enough and took his case to the Local Government Ombudsman. The investigation found fault on nearly every count. The council, it concluded, had misread the address, miscalculated the distance, and ignored key evidence about the family’s finances. It even denied Mr X the right to attend the Stage Two appeal panel – where officials might finally have woken up to their error.

It’s not clear that there even was a second appeal, which would shift the case from one of incompetence to one of contemptuous neglect. The Ombudsman found officials had kept no record of who was present, what evidence they reviewed, or how they reached their decision. Even the council’s published guidance was contradictory, giving different descriptions of the appeals process in separate documents.

“The Council kept no record of who attended the panel and whether they were independent, what evidence they considered, what they discussed, or why they refused the appeal. In the absence of this evidence, I must conclude the panel did not make its decision properly.”

In polite bureaucratic language, the Ombudsman said: “There was fault in how the council considered the appeal which calls into question the outcome. The council’s failure to properly consider the case or explain its reasoning caused distress and confusion.”

He ordered the council to start over. It must reconsider the family’s appeal from scratch, this time using the correct distance, and repay any money owed if support is granted. It must also apologise to Mr X, pay £200 for the distress caused, and provide training to staff. Within three months, Wandsworth must fix the errors in its post-16 SEND transport policy, review its record-keeping, and ensure that future appeals are handled with the care this one lacked.

The decision (reference 24 016 572), is another setback for the borough’s handling of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Under the law, councils are required to take account of distance, affordability and individual circumstances when deciding on transport assistance. In this case, Wandsworth failed on every count.

A pattern of failure

This is far from the first time Wandsworth has been forced to apologise by an independent evaluator for basic incompetence.

A few weeks ago, the borough was found responsible for “shocking neglect” at a care home it commissioned, after a vulnerable man died following months of poor care at Sherwood Grange. The council failed to act on family warnings, closed the case without telling relatives, and even sent an officer to a safeguarding meeting who stayed on mute “because they did not know what to say.”

Then came the case of a domestic-abuse survivor left homeless and sleeping on night buses, when the Ombudsman ruled Wandsworth had broken housing law by ignoring clear evidence that a woman with serious medical needs required emergency accommodation. She was left without shelter for two months, prompting a £700 compensation order and another formal apology.

And before that, a young couple terrorised by a neighbour endured two years of abuse while the council and police failed to act, despite more than 200 incidents. Wandsworth only began eviction proceedings after the offender was jailed. Officials later admitted they “could have acted more swiftly.”

Together, the four rulings in four months reveal a council that apologises often but learns slowly — a pattern of bureaucratic paralysis that leaves residents paying the price.

Councillor Judi Gasser, the cabinet member for children, offered up the apology this time, saying that the council accepted the Ombudsman’s findings and regretted the distress caused. “We take the safety and wellbeing of all children extremely seriously,” she said. “We have offered a formal apology and paid the compensation as ordered. We are taking steps to ensure a positive outcome for the family and are reviewing our processes to strengthen our services for all children and families.”

For Mr X, the numbers tell the story: three decisions, fifteen miles of road, and a council that, for nearly a year, never bothered to check where his son actually went to college.