Today (November 5) is the last official day Parliament will sit before it is dissolved and current MPs - and parliamentary candidates - start their election campaigns.

This means we become bound by what's informally called a pre-election “purdah” period.

Under purdah, civil servants and publicly-funded organisations cannot carry out activities that could be seen to call into question their political impartiality, and they must also avoid activity that competes with parliamentary candidates for the attention of the public.

This means our work investigating cases and issuing decisions on complaints will carry on as normal, but we will not be publishing or promoting any public interest reports.

If you receive our alerts when new complaint decisions are published on our website, these will continue to drop into your inbox every Thursday lunchtime.

Over the past few months we have been restating our concerns about the education system for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Last month we published our third focus report on the Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan process, called 'Not going to plan?'. In the report, we highlight cases of SEND children being failed by the system designed to support them. It is an update on a report we issued two years ago when the new system was in its infancy. Since then, we are investigating more complaints than ever before.

We are now upholding nearly nine out of every 10 complaints (87%) we investigate in this area. This is unprecedented in our work and compares with an average uphold rate of 57% of all cases including SEND. In 2018-19 we received 45% more complaints and carried out 80% more detailed investigations about EHC plans than two years before.

We also contributed to the Education Committee's 18-month enquiry into reforms of the SEND system, also published last month. That report calls for our powers to be extended so we can also look at issues within schools, including free schools and academies. This is something we have long called for, and we stand ready to work with the Government in taking it forward.

Recent public interest reports we've issued about children and education include:

• Bexley council failed to learn from previous school transport complaints
• Ombudsman criticises Worcestershire County Council’s complaints policy in special educational needs investigation
• Dorset County Council leaves boy with special needs without proper education
• Distressed Leeds girl left without proper education for months
• Oxfordshire teen left out of school for 14 months because of council delay
• Ombudsman report highlights gaps in Special Educational Needs system
• Be clear about visits to home-schooled children says Ombudsman
• Autistic man had no schooling due to council’s lack of support, Ombudsman finds
• Councils can investigate parents’ complaints without consent of minors

Read more about the focus report

Our annual review of adult care complaints found problems in nearly two out of every three cases we had investigated in the past year.

In the review, we revealed we are investigating a greater proportion of complaints than previous years – and finding fault on average in 66% of cases.

In some casework areas – including those about fees and charging for care – we had upheld nearly three-quarters of investigations (73%).

We can investigate complaints about all adult social care in England, and we've had the powers to investigate complaints about privately-funded care since 2010. In that time, our uphold rate increased from 43% to 66%.

Despite this, the volume of complaints we received from people who pay for their care is still lower than we would expect. And we think there is yet more the independent care provider sector can do to highlight people’s rights to complain to us.

Other adult social care reports we've issued recently include:

• Somerset council took too long assessing disabled woman’s care needs
• Blue badge applications to be reviewed in Sheffield
• Salford woman left without proper support because council failed to reassess her
• Staffordshire fails to complete agreed remedy following Ombudsman complaint

Read the annual review

We've launched a new guide to help people who work in council benefits manage complex council tax reduction (CTR) enquiries and complaints.

Every year, we receive around 100 complaints and enquiries about the way local authorities manage CTR – sometimes called council tax support - which is a reduction in the amount of council tax a person is required to pay, rather than a paid benefit.

Our guidance is based on the cases we receive and offers practical advice to help councils improve how they provide CTR.

Some of the issues we have come across include inconsistent recovery of CTR reversals and housing benefit overpayments, inaccessible or unclear policies and incorrect signposting and discretionary payments.

Read the guidance