The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s street cleaning service. This is because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council or injustice caused to Mr X sufficient to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
The complainant, who I refer to as Mr X, complains about the Council’s street cleaning service and its handling of his complaint about the matter.
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 or may decide not to continue with 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, including its responses to the complaint.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X complained to the Council about the poor standard of its street cleaning service in his locale.
The Council responded by offering to meet with Mr X so a joint inspection could be carried out with the Environmental Manager. While Mr X declined this offer, the Council confirmed the manager would monitor the area to ensure the scheduled cleansing took place and that any issues identified would be raised with staff to improve the service. It apologised for its delay in responding to his complaint and that the level of cleaning had not been to the expected level.
While Mr X may not be satisfied with the Council’s response, we do not investigate every complaint we receive. In this case there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council or injustice caused to Mr X to warrant an investigation.
We will not generally investigate complaint handling matters when we are not investigating the substantive issue.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council or injustice caused to Mr X sufficient to warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman