Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about highway maintenance because there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating and further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

The complaint

1. Mrs Y complained the Council has failed to maintain the foliage on the streets near her home, failed to have estate agents’ boards removed from next to a nearby road which she says were obscuring sightlines and failed to provide her with suitable updates on the Council’s response to her requests for maintenance works.
2. Mrs Y feels she has been discriminated against on the basis she does not have an email address and feels she has been ignored. She also feels the overgrown plants are a safety hazard.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

4. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information Mrs Y provided and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. The Council’s complaints response outlines the responses it has provided when Mrs Y has reported issues. The response shows that while the Council may not have carried out works immediately after the reports, it has followed an established pattern of maintenance of the grass and foliage in the area. It also shows that where areas have belonged to private individuals, rather than the Council, they have been contacted about the reported problems and the reports have been followed up.
7. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached.
8. As the Council has responded to the reports and considered where it needed to take different types of action and maintained the area in accordance with its maintenance plans, there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.
9. The Council’s response also describes how, following a report from Mrs Y, it has inspected the area where she said estate agent signs were obstructing the view of the road. As the Council has considered the report, assessed the area before deciding whether action was necessary, albeit it found this was not necessary in this case, there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating this complaint.
10. The Council has agreed that it wrongly emailed Mrs Y, despite her not having an email address. It has explained how this happened and the reasons behind this; that its system is unable to accept a report without an email address on it and so staff add an unused council email address into this field. This led to the Council emailing the unused email address to try to update Mrs Y, which was then not received by Mrs Y as she had no access to it. Consequently, she was unaware of any attempted update the Council had tried to provide.
11. The Council has apologised for this error and acknowledged that Mrs Y felt ignored and had not received a response to her enquiries. As this is the likely outcome we would recommend, if we were to investigate and find fault causing injustice to Mrs Y, further investigation would not lead to an outcome which is significantly different to that already provided by the Council. Consequently, as we must use public resources carefully, we will not investigate this complaint.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mrs Y’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating and further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman