will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s street cleaning and it not responding to his initial reports about litter. The Council’s actions, and apology to Mr X, resolve these parts of the complaint and investigation would not achieve a different outcome. Mr X’s complaint about Council staff is a personnel matter we cannot investigate, and we cannot achieve the outcome he seeks. There is not enough evidence of Council fault in its responses to Mr X’s allegation about a local business’ disposal of its waste. That and other complaint issues do not cause Mr X a significant personal injustice warranting an investigation. We will not investigate complaints about councils’ internal complaints process where we are not investigating the matters which gave rise to the complaint.
The complaint
Mr X complains: the Council has failed to remove rubbish from his street; the Council employs street cleaning staff who do not work hard enough; Council staff have been supplying waste resources to a nearby business and removing its commercial waste; officers responded in a curt and dismissive way to his complaint.
Mr X says he has been living in a rubbish-strewn area, and his council tax is paying people to not do their job properly, and ‘indulging in criminality’. He wants the Council to: employ people with a work ethic; improve standards of management and supervision of staff; and not ‘curtly dismiss’ people who complain.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide: there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) We cannot investigate a complaint if it is about a personnel issue. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5a, paragraph 4, as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information from Mr X, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
There may have been fault by the Council here in its street cleaning, and not responding to Mr X’s initial reports of litter before he complained. This understandably would have caused annoyance and frustration to Mr X. However, there is no different outcome an investigation would achieve for him. I say this because in response to his complaint, the Council placed his area on its inspection schedule. A supervising officer met Mr X there to discuss the issues and identify the areas of concern, then staff subsequently cleaned them. The supervisor revisited and considered the area had been cleaned to an acceptable standard. The Council has also placed the area on its monitoring list to make sure it continues to be cleaned, normally every fortnight. The Council’s actions, incuding its apology for these issues, are in line with the outcomes we would have sought had the Council not already provided them. We will not investigate because there is no different or additional outcome to seek for this part of the complaint.
Mr X says the Council’s street cleaning staff do not work hard enough and wants it to employ people with a better work ethic. As their employer, it is for the Council to decide who to employ, and act as it sees fit regarding the performance of all its employees. These are personnel issues outside our jurisdiction which we cannot investigate. The Ombudsman also cannot order councils to make particular personnel decisions, so cannot achieve the outcome Mr X seeks from this part of the complaint.
Mr X believes a local business has been receiving materials and waste collection services from the Council, rather than using its trade waste licence. The Council says it provides rubbish bags and picking equipment, to support a community litter pick involving the business. It says bags filled at those events are collected from the business premises. In response to Mr X’s allegations, it has investigated the collections and not found evidence of the business using the litter pick bags for commercial waste. But the Council has advised it will monitor bags collected at future litter picks. The Council has investigated Mr X’s concerns appropriately. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council in how it responded to this matter which justifies an investigation. Even if there has been fault by the Council here, the result would be the business disposing of its waste using Council resources and not though its commercial licence. Any benefit gained by the firm is not Mr X’s injustice, and it would not cause such significant injustice to Mr X to warrant us investigating.
I note Mr X says his council tax should not be funding staff who do not work hard enough, or a business disposing of commercial waste using Council resources. But even if those issues were within jurisdiction or proven, the amount of tax revenue involved from Mr X is not enough to cause a significant injustice to him justifying investigation.
Mr X says officers responded in a curt and dismissive way to his complaint. We do not investigate councils’ internal complaints processes where we are not investigating the substantive issue which gave rise to the complaint. It is not a good use of our resources to do so. That limitation applies here so we will not investigate this part of the complaint.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because: the Council’s actions, and apology to Mr X, are an appropriate outcome for the street cleaning and reporting complaint, and there is no different or additional outcome for an investigation to achieve; the complaint about Council staff is a personnel issue we cannot investigate, we cannot achieve the changes to Council recruitment he seeks, and the matter does not cause him a significant personal injustice warranting investigation; there is not enough evidence of Council fault in its response to Mr X’s allegation about a local business, and even if there were fault, this would not lead to a significant personal injustice to him justifying an investigation; we will not investigate complaints about councils’ internal complaints processes where we are not investigating the substantive matters which gave rise to the complaint.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman