BURY Council is to pay a man £600 compensation after he lodged an official complaint.

The man - given the alias Mr Redfern - was unhappy over the way the borough's social services department dealt with him.

Local government Ombudsman Patricia Thomas has ruled that Bury Metro has settled the complaint against the council to her satisfaction.

The complaint concerned the unauthorised involvement of a social worker in a private law matter and the council's failure to provide equipment to assist the complainant with his disability.

Apologised

Bury Metro's Chief Executive Dennis Taylor said: "We take any complaint against ourselves seriously and while we are happy that this matter has been settled to the satisfaction of the Ombudsman we have taken steps within the local authority to ensure that our procedures are tightened up and that problems of this kind do not occur again.

"We have apologised to the complainant and we have taken on board all the comments made by the Ombudsman.

"It is our intention to offer the best possible service to our customers, the public of Bury, and we are always ready to learn from any mistakes that we might make."

Copies of the report will be available for public inspection during normal office hours at Bury Town Hall for three weeks.

Anyone is entitled to take copies of the report or extracts from it for a "reasonable charge." As part of the local settlement the council has now agreed to pay compensation of £600 to Mr Redfern.

The announcement follows a complaint made by a resident of the Borough -

The man - by the Ombudsman - over the way the Social

Services department dealt with him.

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