The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to respond to the complainant’s request for faded dog fouling stickers where he lives to be replaced. The Council has apologised for the delay to respond and offered to send replacement stickers for the complainant to put up.
The complaint
The complainant, I shall call Mr X, says the Council failed to respond to his request to replace dog fouling stickers on the lamp posts where he lives.
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. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X complains the Council has failed to respond to his repeated requests for dog fouling stickers to be replaced on the lamp posts where he lives.
The Council has told Mr X it cannot confirm when this will be done as it is prioritising work where it has a statutory duty to act. It apologised for Mr X not receiving a reply to his emails. However, it confirmed the officer he was writing to has been off sick for some time. The Council has offered to send Mr X some stickers so he can replace the faded ones himself, however he has refused this offer.
Mr X says the Council’s lack of action and response has caused him to lose trust in reporting issues to the Council. He also says there are many dog walkers where he lives, and the dog fouling stickers have all faded. However, the Council does not have a statutory duty to erect these stickers. And I do not consider he has suffered a significant personal injustice because of the Council’s actions to warrant an investigation.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient personal injustice to justify the Ombudsman’s involvement.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman