The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s response to Mr X’s request for information about the turning off of his water supply for a day. This is because neither the fault by the Council nor the injustice caused to Mr X is sufficient to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
The complainant, who I refer to as Mr X, says he feels ignored by the Council because it has not properly explained why his water supply was cut off for a day during a group visit to a neighbouring property and that it has not responded to emails he sent.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate 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 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 we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X considers the Council’s response to his enquiry about the cutting off of his water supply for a day to have been inadequate.
In responding to his complaint about this matter the Council told him that it had not been involved in turning off the supply. It explained a meeting at a neighbouring property had taken place involving the property owners, their agents and builders and a planning officer. It said the first three were on site before and after the meeting and during the meeting none of the participants turned off the water supply to that property or Mr X’s.
While Mr X may be dissatisfied with the Council’s response to his query and his emails, this is not a complaint we will investigate as neither the fault claimed by Mr X nor the injustice caused to him is significant enough to warrant an investigation.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because neither fault by the Council nor the injustice caused to him is sufficient to warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman