The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s contractor not emptying his garden waste bin and incorrectly stating the bin was not presented for collection. The matters complained of cause insufficient significant personal injustice to warrant us investigating and investigation would not achieve a different outcome.
The complaint
Mr X complains: the Council’s contractor missed one of his garden waste collections; on investigating the matter, the Council and its contractor incorrectly said the bin had not been emptied because it had not been put out for collection.
Mr X says the Council believing its contractor over him, despite his CCTV evidence, made him feel like he was lying when he was not. He wants a written apology from the contractor and for the Council to not automatically believe its contractor in future.
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 continue 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; or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information from Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
We recognise Mr X’s missed collection and the Council’s initial response to his complaint caused him annoyance and upset. The matters complained of do not cause Mr X sufficient significant personal injustice to warrant us investigating.
In its final response to Mr X’s complaint, the Council accepted the bin crew got it wrong about the bin not being out for collection. Officers passed on to Mr X the apology from the contractor for that issue, and the contractor’s comment that it was not its intention to call Mr X’s honesty into question. We note Mr X wants an apology from the contractor as part of the outcome to his complaint. But the organisation within our jurisdiction here is not the contractor; it is the Council, which is responsible for the actions of its contractor. So we could not pursue another apology from the contractor. There is no different outcome we could have achieve here by investigating.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because: the matters complained of did not cause sufficient significant injustice to warrant us investigating; and investigation would not achieve a different outcome.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman