The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to response to the complainant’s enquiries. There is insignificant injustice to warrant our involvement.
The complaint
The complainant, I shall call Mr B, complains the Council failed to respond to his multiple requests to speak to an officer.
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: any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, 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 B and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr B called the Council to speak to the Conservation Officer about the condition of a local listed building. He did not receive any response. Nor did he receive a response to a letter.
In response to his complaint the Council advised it does not respond to enquiries about the condition of listed buildings. It offers a fee-paying service for questions on heritage related matters. Mr B had not paid the fee, so the Council is not obliged to correspond with him.
The Council could have told Mr B that would not respond until he paid the fee.
However, although this was frustrating I do not consider Mr B has suffered sufficient injustice to warrant our involvement.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr B’s complaint because he has not suffered enough injustice to justify an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman