The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s delay in dealing with his application for a private hire vehicle driver’s licence. This is because the Council has provided a suitable remedy.
The complaint
The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council delayed in dealing with his application for a private hire vehicle driver’s licence. He also complains about the Council’s failure to respond to his correspondence.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
At the time Mr X applied for his licence the Council advised it aimed to deal with applications within 20 working days. The Council took 22 working days to assess Mr X’s application and at that point it found he was not signed up to the DBS update service and had not completed the up-to-date driver training. It therefore wrote to Mr X explaining it could not proceed with his application until he had fulfilled these requirements.
Mr X disputed the requirement to complete the Council’s driver training as he had attended five years previously but the Council took 23 working days to respond to his correspondence. The Council accepts it took too long to deal with Mr X’s email but has taken sufficient steps to remedy this. It wrote to Mr X to clarify the requirement to complete the driver training and arranged for Mr X to attend the next day. It then expedited Mr X’s application, granting the licence the day after Mr X completed the driver training and readying the licence for collection three days later. It waived the £40 fee for the training and offered to extend Mr X’s licence from one to three years, providing a further benefit of £56.
While Mr X is not satisfied with the remedy offered by the Council we consider it to be reasonable in the circumstances. Mr X suggests he lost income as a result of the time taken by the Council to process his application but we could not attribute any loss of income directly and solely to the Council’s actions or quantify the amount of the losses for which the Council may be responsible.
Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with his complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council has provided a suitable remedy for the complaint and it is unlikely investigation would achieve anything more for Mr X.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman