The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council‘s handling of Mr X’s complaint about the conduct of local councillors as there is insufficient evidence of Mr X being caused significant injustice by any Council fault.
The complaint
Mr X complained to the Council that three local councillors failed to respond to Mr X’s emails and also blocked him on a social media site. Mr X complains of around a four month delay in the Council providing its response.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints of injustice caused by maladministration and service failure. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached 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 or continue an investigation if we decide any fault has not caused significant injustice to the person who complained (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council considered Mr X’s complaint and decided it did not provide evidence that the councillors had breach the code of conduct. The Council advised Mr X that councillors cannot be compelled to respond to emails under the code of conduct and were also at liberty to prevent access to their social media.
I have not seen fault in the way this decision was reached (aside from some delay) and so we cannot criticise it.
The Council has acknowledged there was delay in providing its response and it has apologised to Mr X for this. I do not consider the impact on Mr X from the delay is serious enough to warrant our further involvement.
For these reasons, we will not investigate.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because any Council fault has not caused him a significant injustice. As such, our further involvement is not warranted.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman