The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council pruned the complainant’s hedge without telling him in advance. This is because there is insufficient evidence of injustice.
The complaint
The complainant, whom I refer to as Mr X, complains the Council cut back his hedge without any notice. He says the Council has caused criminal damage and his children can no longer play in the garden. Mr X wants a fence or new hedge.
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 an investigation if we decide: any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or 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. This includes the complaint correspondence and images of the hedge before and after the cut. I also looked at computer images of the hedge from November 2020 and considered our Assessment Code. I considered comments Mr X made in reply to a draft of this decision.
My assessment
The Council received reports that Mr X’s hedge was obstructing a pavement. I have seen photographs which confirm this. The Council cut back the hedge to the boundary.
Mr X complained. In response the Council explained it is an offence to let a hedge obstruct a path. The Council said it should have written to Mr X to give him the opportunity to prune it. The Council explained it should only have done the work, and charged Mr X, if he had failed to comply with a notice to cut back the hedge. The Council said it would not charge Mr X for the work. The Council apologised for not contacting him in advance.
The Council made an error because it should have given Mr X the opportunity to prune the hedge. However, I will not investigate the complaint because there is insufficient evidence of injustice. The photographs show the Council cut back the hedge to the boundary and it does now look very different because it was quite overgrown. But, it does not look much different to how it looked in 2020 before pruning.
In addition, the garden is enclosed behind a brick wall so Mr X’s children have a safe play space. Mr X says they cannot now play in the area between the hedge and brick wall; but this is a relatively small area and the hedge will grow as demonstrated by the differences in the photographs from late 2020 to when the hedge was overgrown this year.
The Council has not charged Mr X for the work, which had to be done, so Mr X would either have had to spend time doing the work or have paid for it to be done.
We are unable to assess allegations of crime. If Mr X feels the Council has caused criminal damage then that would be a matter for Mr X to address through the courts or the police.
Final decision
We will not start an investigation because there is insufficient evidence of injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman