The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about delay by the Council in responding to Ms X’s complaint about councillor conduct as any remaining injustice caused to Ms X is not sufficient to warrant our involvement. We cannot question the decision on Ms X’s complaint as, other than the delay, there is no indication of fault in how it was reached.
The complaint
Ms X complains the Council took around 15 months to respond to her complaint that a councillor unlawfully accessed her personal data and published it on a social media site. Mrs X complains the delay in waiting for the decision impacted on her mental health.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints of injustice caused by maladministration and service failure. I have used the word fault to refer to these. 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 (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended) 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 fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council apologised to Ms X for the delay, and explained that there has been a high turnover of legal officers at the Council over the past 12 – 15 months.
The Council’s decision was that Ms X’s complaint did not disclose a potential breach of the code of conduct by the councillor as the information in question was in the public domain, by virtue of Ms X’s role in a public body. The Council decided therefore that no further action would be taken.
Unless there is evidence of fault in the way the Council reached this decision, we cannot criticise it. I have not seen evidence of such fault. In addition, this is essentially a complaint about data protection and as such, if Ms X remains dissatisfied, I consider the most appropriate body to consider the matter further is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). This is the UK’s independent authority on data privacy issues.
While I recognise the delay in the Council providing its response did impact on Ms X, I do not consider this represents a sufficient level of injustice, from our perspective, that would warrant our involvement.
For these reasons, we will not investigate.
Final decision
We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of Council fault causing a significant injustice to Ms X.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman