The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s refusal to investigate a complaint that every member of a town council breached the code of conduct. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s actions to justify an investigation.
The complaint
The complainant, I shall call Mr B, complains the Council refuses to investigate his complaint that all members of a town council breached the councillor’s code of conduct.
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 Mr B and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr B complained to the Council that all members of a town council had breached the code of conduct by failing to properly explain why and how his personal data has been processed; and failing to provide a lawful basis for disclosing and infringing data protection.
The Council contacted Mr B. It said it cannot investigate the town council as a body. It asked him to provide the names of the councillors against whom the complaint is made. And asked him to provide details of how each person had breached the code of conduct.
Mr B listed the names of all members of the town council and repeated the above allegation.
The Council replied to Mr B stating again it cannot consider the actions of the town council as a whole. And it did not consider that Mr B has explained how each individual councillor had breached the code.
The Council’s arrangements for dealing with complaints about councillors says: “The Monitoring Office may request information from you or from the councillor against whom your complaint is directed. If this is the case, additional time will be needed before she can assess the complaint.”
In this case, the Monitoring Officer has explained she needs details on how each town councillor has breached the code. A blanket complaint against the entire town council is not sufficient.
This is a decision the Council is entitled to make.
The Ombudsman does not offer a right of appeal against a council’s decision on member conduct complaints. We can consider if there was fault in the way the Council considered the complaint about town or parish councillors. But we would need to consider what we could achieve as we cannot investigate the actions of the town or parish council itself.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is no evidence of fault in how the Council dealt with his complaint.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman