The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council not installing gullies to drain surface water from the road in front of her house.
There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision‑making process to justify us investigating.
The complaint
Mrs X lives at the end of a dead end street. She complains the Council has failed to install drainage gullies in the highway in front of her house.
Mrs X says the road floods when it rains and does not drain for days. She says she has to drive through it when using her driveway and in winter the water causes ice on her drive. Mrs X says her neighbours have complained to her because the water is in front of her house. She considers the flooding is affecting the value of her property and it has delayed her installing a new drive. Mrs X wants the Council to install the gullies so the water has somewhere to go.
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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in the decision making, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information from Mrs X, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
In response to Mrs X’s concerns, the Council advised the installation of surface water drainage in the highway in front of her property was not a priority and would not be done at that time. The Council says it works on drainage improvements based on risk assessments and technical issues. Officers have visited the site, considered the location of the flooding and the risks it causes, and determined it to be a low priority. The Council says it has a backlog of other drainage requests where the assessed risks are greater, and so officers have given those works higher priority. Officers have advised Mrs X that they will be investigating whether there is other highway work they might do, not involving the installation of new drains, to improve the surface water issue outside her property.
We may only go behind a council’s decision if there has been fault in its decision‑making which, but for that fault, a different decision would have been made. In reaching their decision not to prioritise installing new drains in front of Mrs X’s address, officers visited the site, considered her information, and applied their risk and technical assessments. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making process here to allow us to criticise its officers’ professional judgement on the priority the Council should give to Mrs X’s flooding issue. I recognise Mrs X disagrees with that decision and considers the matter should be a higher priority. But it is not fault for a council to properly make a decision with which someone disagrees.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making process to warrant us investigating.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman