The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the way the Council dealt with reports of graffiti where the complainant lives. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s actions. Nor do we consider Mr X has suffered enough personal injustice to warrant our involvement.
The complaint
The complainant, I shall call Mr X, says the Council has failed to act on his reports of graffiti on residential properties in the area where he lives.
He finds it depressing and distressing seeing the graffiti daily.
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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council’s website says it will aim to remove offensive graffiti from its own property within two working days. It aims to remove other graffiti from its own property within one month.
If it receives report of graffiti on privately owned homes, it will contact the property owner and ask them to remove it. If the owner wishes, the Council can remove the graffiti but charges for this service.
Mr X complains the Council failed to deal with all his reports of graffiti within a reasonable timescale.
The Council confirms it has visited the area written to the owners of all the properties which have graffiti on them. However, as these are not Council properties it cannot simply remove the graffiti and charge the owners.
There is no duty on the Council to force private property owners to remove graffiti from their premises.
I understand Mr X is dissatisfied with the way the Council considered his complaint. While we would expect the Council to respond according to its complaints policy I do not propose to investigate this issue further. We do not consider it to be a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are not dealing with the substantive issue.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s actions and Mr X has not suffered sufficient personal injustice to warrant our involvement
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman