Prison complaint handler's investigation of disability complaint was reasonable

What happened

Mr D suffered from pain that he described as a disability. He asked for a piece of furniture for his cell when he entered the prison but the prison turned his first application down. He complained to the PPO.

In the course of the PPO's investigation, and after a number of further applications and complaints to the prison, the prison gave Mr D the furniture he had asked for. As the outcome that he had wanted had been achieved, the PPO said that it would not uphold his complaint. Mr D complained to us about this decision and the length of time it took the PPO to investigate his complaint. He also said that the PPO had not considered the prison's complaint responses or other aspects of his complaint.

What we found

We did not think that it was unreasonable that the PPO took six months to investigate Mr D's complaint or that it was unreasonable for the PPO to focus its investigation on the outcome that he had wanted.

We could see that the governor of the prison explained to Mr D that he required a statement of Mr D's need for specific furniture from a medical professional who had examined him since he had arrived at the prison. We explained to Mr D that we considered the prison's response to why he was not initially given the furniture to be reasonable. We considered that it would have been more thorough of the PPO to look at this response in more detail but we did not think it was unreasonable for it not to do so, given that Mr D had now received the furniture he had asked for. Because of this, we did not uphold the complaint.