MOST complaints against the council that were investigated by the ombudsman last year were upheld.

The local authority had to pay out £3,300 after 13 complaints were upheld.

A total of 32 complaints were made about Bolton Council to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman between August 2017 and 2018.

Some of these were not investigated because the issue was being dealt with by the courts.

In one case, the authority failed to properly assess a man’s care needs and consequently paid him too little.

The ombudsman found that the council caused him distress in “long” and “inappropriate” telephone calls and delayed dealing with his complaint.

After apologising to the man, the council agreed to pay him £1,000 for his time and trouble and backdate the additional payments for two years.

This comes as a national report warned local authorities not to “throw out the rule book” in the face of budget cuts.

Ombudsman Michael King said: “The core principles of good administration are more important than ever when undergoing major transformation.”

The proportion of complaints upheld against Bolton is lower than the regional average of 70 per cent.

A council spokesman said: “We have made changes to improve our complaints handling procedure. We have introduced a new casework management system, recruited additional staff, and introduced monthly monitoring meetings. We will continue to make service improvements to reduce the number of complaints.”