London Borough of Lewisham (21 012 613)
Category : Other Categories > Councillor conduct and standards
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 05 Jan 2022
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to address a complaint Mr X made about a councillor. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council or injustice caused to Mr X to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
- The complainant, who I refer to as Mr X, says he never received a response from the Council’s Monitoring Officer in response to a complaint he made about a local councillor.
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 effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start an investigation if the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by Mr X.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- In October 2020 Mr X contacted a local councillor with queries about the Council’s response to traffic speeding in the borough. In December the Council emailed Mr X to say the councillor would not be responding further on the matter having already provided three responses to him.
- When Mr X made a complaint about the councillor’s failure to respond to him, the officer who is his single point of contact referred him to the December email and told him that the Monitoring Officer would be taking no further action in connection with his complaint.
- While I note Mr X says it took the Council three months to confirm the Monitoring Officer would not be looking further at the matter, neither this fault nor the injustice caused to him are sufficient to warrant an investigation by the Ombudsman.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council or injustice caused to Mr X to warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman