Summary: A man complained that the Council wrongly instigated his arrest which led to him being convicted in court, and its failure to respond to his complaints about this issue. But it we will not investigate these matters because the man has complained to us late.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I shall call Mr X, said the Council had unreasonably insisted he was arrested after he made a complaint about another person, when it should have sought the arrest of that person instead. Mr X said this led to a criminal conviction which damaged his reputation. Mr X also said the Council had failed to respond to his complaints about this matter. In the circumstances he wanted an apology and compensation from the Council.

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. But the law also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate. In particular we normally cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information Mr X provided about his complaint and his comments in response to a draft of this decision. In addition I took account of information from the Council about the issue in Mr X’s complaint.

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My assessment

4. I do not see that we should start an investigation of Mr X’s complaint. This is because he has complained to us late and, as a result, the restriction on our jurisdiction, which I refer to in paragraph 2 above, applies in his case.
5. In particular, I understand that the events in question in Mr X’s case date back to 2016, and that he was convicted in court later that year. But Mr X only complained to us about this matter in December 2020, which is evidently well beyond 12 months since he became aware of the issue in question.
6. I am also not convinced there is any good cause for us to exercise our discretion and investigate Mr X’s complaint now despite it being late. In particular I see no reason why Mr X could not have made a complaint to us much nearer the time he became aware of his issue with the Council.
7. In addition, I do not see we could achieve a meaningful outcome for Mr X by pursuing his complaint.
8. First, it was the police rather than the Council that made the decision to arrest Mr X and it was the courts which decided on his conviction. Also, the case against Mr X was aired in two court hearings, and we cannot consider what takes place in court proceedings. In the circumstances, I do not see we would be in any position to find that Mr X’s conviction was attributable to fault by the Council or to change the legal outcome in his case.
9. In addition, we do not consider it a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about a council’s complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue in the complaint. Therefore I have also concluded that we should not pursue Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s failure to respond to his complaints.

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Final Decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that the Council wrongly instigated his arrest which led to his conviction in court, and failed to respond to his complaints about this issue. This is because Mr X has complained late and there is no good reason for us to exercise discretion and pursue these matters now.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman