Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s maintenance of the cul-de-sac where Mr X lives, including work to the grass strip adjacent to his property. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council or injustice caused to Mr X to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains that since the Council has been responsible for the upkeep of the cul-de-sac he lives in, including the grass strip adjacent to his property, he has had to complain over 24 years about the lack of maintenance. He says overgrowth of the grass strip encroaches his front garden.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council, including its response to the complaint.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mr X complained to the Council about the maintenance of his cul-de sac. Officers visited him and explained the strip of grass adjacent to his property is cut by a small machine and would be attended to when its team was in the area and that the hedge along the cul-de-sac would be trimmed as part of ongoing maintenance.
6. While Mr X may not be satisfied with the Council’s response, we do not investigate every complaint we receive and we will not investigate when the tests in our Assessment Code are not met. The Council confirmed the areas of concern raised by Mr X would be attended to in accordance with its maintenance programme and there is no evidence of fault by the Council or injustice caused to Mr X sufficient to warrant a formal investigation by the Ombudsman.
7. Mr X refers to problems over many years but we will not consider these past years. This is because we 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 when we would reasonably have expected them to have complained to us sooner.

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Final decision

8. 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.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman