Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council cancelling the complainant’s commercial waste collection service. There is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council reached its decision, and investigation is unlikely to lead to a different outcome.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council terminated his commercial waste collection service after he had complained about a missed collection and had requested information regarding how much a hedge needed to be cut back to allow access for the refuse vehicles.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We can 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. So, we do not start an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

3. And it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mr X, which included his complaint correspondence with the Council.
5. I also considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. I can appreciate why Mr X is unhappy the Council terminated the contract for his commercial waste collection in response to his complaint, particularly as he had received this service for 20 years.
7. But the Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. And our role is not to ask whether an organisation could have done things better, or whether we agree or disagree with what it did. Instead, we look at whether there was fault in how it made its decisions. If we decide there is not enough evidence of fault in how it did so, we cannot ask whether it should have made a particular decision or say it should have reached a different outcome.
8. The Council was looking in more detail at the service it provided to Mr X as part of the complaint he had made about a missed collection and the hedge along the access road. It decided the contract for irregular/ad hoc commercial collections of a small 240L bin outside of its administrative area was no longer financially viable.
9. Although Mr X has received this service for many years and disagrees with the reasoning behind the Council’s decision, it was ultimately entitled to decide to terminate the contract. There is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council reached its decision to justify starting an investigation, and an investigation by the Ombudsman is unlikely to lead to a different outcome for Mr X.
10. As we are not investigating the substantive issue being complained about, it would not be a good use of our resources to purse any associated concerns about the Council’s complaints process.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault in the way the Council decided to terminate the commercial waste contract, and investigation is unlikely to lead to a different outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman