Is Autism being treated under disabled Children mandate not Autism mandate

I did pursue the issue of my former local authority's non-compliance, and sounded out the responses I got with NAS.

Basically they were doing nothing 'wrong' in the sense of pursuing any remedy, and were possibly even trying (though in my view they were very trying). In terms of meeting the government expectations at the first review point, they had got a diagnosis mechanism for adults (albeit one set up by the local NHS years ago) which was better than what many counties had. And they were promising to implement the requirements (procurement manager, partnership board etc). The Government seems at this stage to be quite happy not to push for compliance, and nothing much seems to have happened since last April.

As to suing a council this is vastly harder than you might think. With the same council 13 years ago, I tried to rectify a problem. I was involved in monitoring some practice, and to show a paper trail of doing so I had to log paperwork evidence with the council. The council was predictably doing its utmost to "lose" the log. I went through three levels of complaint without success. At each stage they insisted I was not following logging procedure, each time coming up with different elaborate and complex methods. As each stage of complaint was independent of previous, no notice was taken of the change in method, or its absurdity. I eventually took my case to the ombudsman and lost.

According to the ombudsman, however disgraceful things appeared, there was nothing sdet down about procedure that the council could be held to task for.

To you and I who can get fined for accidentally dropping a buit of paper, or ridiculous parking offences, without any real hope of a reprieve, it comes as a shock to find that most councils are immune from prosecution because very little is set down about what they can and cannot do. However dishonest and even shockingly corrupt things may appear, legally they have to have contravened a law or legal procedure, and the sad fact is there's very litle they can be held to account for.

So suing them, besides the fact they can get very good lawyers, and put big restrictions on what your legal defence can do, you are almost invariably doomed to lose your case.

The answer apparently is democracy. We are supposed to vote out bad councils, even when they have an overwhelming majority. Trouble is its not entirely down to the politicians. Most iof the problem is the truly appalling lack of regulation of local government civil servants, the grosss lack of standards and accountability, and the shame that if you manage to get one of them sacked their contract guarantees them a massive compensation payout at the ratepayers expence.

We are very badly served in this country by local government.

I did pursue the issue of my former local authority's non-compliance, and sounded out the responses I got with NAS.

Basically they were doing nothing 'wrong' in the sense of pursuing any remedy, and were possibly even trying (though in my view they were very trying). In terms of meeting the government expectations at the first review point, they had got a diagnosis mechanism for adults (albeit one set up by the local NHS years ago) which was better than what many counties had. And they were promising to implement the requirements (procurement manager, partnership board etc). The Government seems at this stage to be quite happy not to push for compliance, and nothing much seems to have happened since last April.

As to suing a council this is vastly harder than you might think. With the same council 13 years ago, I tried to rectify a problem. I was involved in monitoring some practice, and to show a paper trail of doing so I had to log paperwork evidence with the council. The council was predictably doing its utmost to "lose" the log. I went through three levels of complaint without success. At each stage they insisted I was not following logging procedure, each time coming up with different elaborate and complex methods. As each stage of complaint was independent of previous, no notice was taken of the change in method, or its absurdity. I eventually took my case to the ombudsman and lost.

According to the ombudsman, however disgraceful things appeared, there was nothing sdet down about procedure that the council could be held to task for.

To you and I who can get fined for accidentally dropping a buit of paper, or ridiculous parking offences, without any real hope of a reprieve, it comes as a shock to find that most councils are immune from prosecution because very little is set down about what they can and cannot do. However dishonest and even shockingly corrupt things may appear, legally they have to have contravened a law or legal procedure, and the sad fact is there's very litle they can be held to account for.

So suing them, besides the fact they can get very good lawyers, and put big restrictions on what your legal defence can do, you are almost invariably doomed to lose your case.

The answer apparently is democracy. We are supposed to vote out bad councils, even when they have an overwhelming majority. Trouble is its not entirely down to the politicians. Most iof the problem is the truly appalling lack of regulation of local government civil servants, the grosss lack of standards and accountability, and the shame that if you manage to get one of them sacked their contract guarantees them a massive compensation payout at the ratepayers expence.

We are very badly served in this country by local government.