The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: I will not investigate this complaint about contact restrictions placed on the complainant by the Council. This is because there is no evidence of fault in how the Council dealt with the matter.
The complaint
The complainant, who I will call Mr X, complains about the Council’s decision to place restrictions on his contact under its unreasonable persistent complainants procedure. Mr X says the Council’s actions have caused him distress.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
The complainant had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered their comments before making a final decision.
My assessment
The Council wrote to Mr X about his contact with officers who were investigating two complaints from him. The Council said Mr X had sent the officers a large number of emails and it considered this to be unreasonably persistent. It therefore asked him to refrain from sending so many emails.
After further contact was received, the Council made its decision to restrict his contact with the officers while they investigated his complaints. It asked Mr X not to send any further emails to the officers and to only respond when contacted for information. Mr X appealed the Council’s decision. The Chief Executive reviewed the relevant information and concluded that the decision to restrict Mr X’s contact was appropriate.
I will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. This is because there is no evidence of fault in how the Council made the decision to restrict his contact or how it dealt with his reviews request. We may not question the merits of decisions which have been properly made. We do not comment on judgements councils make, unless they are affected by fault in the decision-making process. In this case the Council followed the procedure correctly and Mr X was able to submit a review request against the decision, although this was unsuccessful.
Final decision
I will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman