Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s communication with Mr X over his requests for information about road safety improvements. Parts of his complaint are late and there is otherwise no significant injustice.

The complaint

1. Mr X said he has been campaigning for road safety improvements to a stretch or road near his home since 2020. Mr X said he found the service the Council provided in passing information about this matter, to be poor. He also said more recently, in 2024, he was trying to obtain information and found the Council was unhelpful and it was unnecessarily delayed.
2. Mr X said he found this stressful.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
4. 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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by Mr X and I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Mr X said he was unhappy with how the Council dealt with him as a representative of local residents, while trying to secure road safety improvements on a main road near where he lives.
7. The Council said it had previously provided him with a response to his earlier queries about matters related to this issue in August 2023.
8. Anything related to these matters at that point is a late complaint, and we will not investigate. This is because there are no good reasons why Mr X could not have complained to us sooner, if was dissatisfied about the Council’s response given to him then.
9. Mr X said in mid-2024, he raised some additional queries and was dissatisfied with the responses he got and he made a complaint. The Council replied to Mr and provided a response to his queries. These appear to be a reasonable response to his questions.
10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about how it communicated with him, because there is no significant injustice. We do not start an investigation if we decide the impact of the fault a person complains about is not so significant that we should investigate.
11. We will normally only investigate a complaint where the complainant has suffered serious loss, harm or distress as a direct result of faults or failures by an organisation. In addition, we will not normally investigate a complaint where the complainant is using their enquiry as a way of raising a wider community campaign about something of general concern but where they have not suffered injustice.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint, because some parts are late and there is otherwise no significant injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman