The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the Council’s decision to change where she should store her waste bins. We cannot make findings on the land ownership and legal issues at the core of the complaint so cannot achieve a different outcome from investigating or get her the outcomes she seeks. There is also insufficient personal injustice caused to Miss X by the matter to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
Miss X lives in a house with a service road to the rear. She stored her bins there, and the Council used the road to empty her bins. Miss X complains the Council: incorrectly changed the required storage location for her bins; failed to consult her about the change; failed to properly investigate the complaint.
Miss X says she is distressed the Council has not reached an impartial view, and alarmed that other officers have not seen the lead officer’s actions as lacking impartiality and professionalism. She says she has felt ‘harassed’ in her home by the lead officer hand-delivering Council letters. She reports she has lost trust in the Council to act fairly and with integrity.
Miss X wants the Council to accept: it has no legal right to dictate where she stores her bins; that an easement can exist without registration at the Land Registry; it has no authority to determine the easement issue; there is no such offence as ‘aiding abetting trespass’; she has a legal right of way over the service road which she can extend to the Council as her invitee, for the purposes of bin collections; and it has no legal authority to involve itself or decide private law matters.
Miss X also wants the Council to allow her to buy bins from other suppliers.
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: further investigation would not lead to a different outcome; or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement; or we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information from Miss X, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The core issue here is the ownership of and use rights of the service road. Miss X disputes the ownership claim over the road and disputes restrictions on her using the land to store her bins. The Council has accepted the claim over the ownership of the land and considers this means it cannot condone residents using the road to store bins. It says it is required to respect the rights of landowners when delivering its waste service. As a result, it has contacted residents requiring them to not store the bins on the service road, and to change the bin collection point to a location on the nearby highway.
We cannot make findings on the core land ownership and use issues to resolve these disagreements between Miss X and the Council. Only a court could determine these legal matters. This means there is no different outcome an investigation would achieve because we cannot determine whether the Council’s or Miss X’s positions on each issue are the correct ones.
The key outcomes Miss X seeks from her complaint would also require us to findings which we cannot make on the core land ownership and land use issues. We cannot achieve these outcomes for Miss X by investigating, which is a further reason why we will not investigate the complaint.
Miss X says the Council should have consulted her about changes to the bin service caused by the land issue. While it might have been best practice for the Council to have consulted Miss X, it would not have resulted in a different outcome as she and the Council remain in disagreement on the matter after the Council’s complaint process. This outcome would not have been changed by a consultation.
Even if the Council is wrong in its decisions regarding the land ownership and use issues, leading to changes to the bin service, we will not investigate. I recognise Miss X is upset, annoyed, frustrated, and has lost trust in officers because the Council disagrees with her, which she sees as the Council not being impartial. But we do not investigate complaints where there is insufficient injustice caused by the matters complained of, and this claimed injustice is not sufficient to warrant an investigation.
Miss X also says she felt harassed by an officer hand-delivering Council letters to her property. Harassment is a criminal matter which we cannot make a finding on. If Miss X believes the officer harassed her while or by delivering the letters, she should pursue that with the police.
Miss X says the Council has not properly dealt with her complaint. We do not investigate councils’ internal complaints processes in isolation where we are not investigating the core issues giving rise to the complaint. It is not a good use of our resources to do so. That limitation applies here so we will not pursue this part of Miss X’s complaint.
Final decision
We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because: there is no different outcome an Ombudsman investigation would achieve; and we cannot achieve the outcomes Miss X seeks from her complaint; there is not enough personal injustice caused to her by the matter to justify us investigating; we do not investigate complaints about councils’ internal complaint-handling where we are not investigating the issues which gave rise to the complaint.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman