Summary
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s decision to install a bicycle hangar in the road in front of his house. There is not enough evidence of fault affecting the Council’s decision to warrant investigation. Even if there were such fault, the decision to place the hangar in front of Mr X’s property does not cause him such significant personal injustice to justify us investigation.
The complaint
Mr X lives on a road where the Council installed a bicycle hangar in front of his property. The hangar is an enclosed structure provided for residents to use to store their bicycles, and is in a former parking space.
Mr X complains the Council failed to properly consult him on the proposal to install the bicycle hangar. He says the hangar has affected his privacy, led to more rubbish in the area including an abandoned bicycle, led to poor behaviour from some cyclists, and blocked and ruined his view of the street from his property. Mr X wants the Council to relocate the hangar and review its consultation and communication processes for future similar matters.
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, or any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in the decision making, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information from Mr X, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Councils are not required by law to consult residents on many types of work they can do within the highway. Where they do decide to consult, even where there is no statutory requirement for them to do so, we would expect them to conduct the process properly.
The Council has set out in its complaint response the non-statutory actions it took to consult with and notify residents regarding its bicycle hangar proposals. Officers did various notifications and ran information events. These included local press releases, a public consultation of residents in streets affected by the plans in 2021, and an online consultation on its web page. The plans also required a further statutory process under the ‘Traffic Order Procedures’ because the hangars would be in a former parking place within the highway. The Council says it advertised its formal ‘Notice of Proposals’ in the local press, then its ‘Notice of Making’ under those procedures. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council in the processes it followed here when notifying and consulting Mr X on their plans for the bicycle hangar to justify an investigation.
We can only go behind a council decision if there has been fault in the decision‑making process which, but for that fault, would have resulted in a different outcome. I recognise Mr X disagrees with the Council’s decision on where to locate the hangar. But it is not fault for a council to properly make a decision with which someone disagrees.
The Council says it advised residents of the 2021 public consultation by letter, which included details of the hangar’s proposed location. It accepts it has no record of a notification letter to one of Mr X’s neighbours but does say it sent one to Mr X’s address. Mr X’s neighbour’s letter is not an issue affecting Mr X. It is unfortunate if Mr X did not receive his letter, but even if we investigated, we could not find out what happened to the letter now. Furthermore, if Mr X had objected to the hangar’s location during the consultation, that would have been set in the balance with the support for it the Council had received from a larger number of residents. We could not now say that Mr X’s objections would have resulted in a different outcome for the hangar’s location.
Even if there has been fault in the Council’s notification and consultation processes, we will not investigate. This is because the impacts of having the hangar outside his house, which Mr X mentions as injustices, are not significant enough to justify us investigating.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because: there is not enough evidence of fault affecting the Council’s decision to install the bicycle hangar in front of his house to warrant an investigation; and even if there were such fault, the outcome of the process does not cause him such significant personal injustice to justify us investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman