The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council has managed its communications with the complainant. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council.
The complaint
The complainant, who I will call Mr X, complains about how the Council has managed it communications with him. Mr X says the Council has failed to make reasonable adjustments for his disabilities for the last four years. Mr X also says the Council has restricted his contact under its unreasonable complainants policy and that staff have terminated his calls, because he records them.
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 further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)) We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X says the Council has failed to implement his requested reasonable adjustments for the last four years. We have previously considered complaints from Mr X about how the Council has managed his reasonable adjustments as recently as April this year and cannot consider the same matters again. I will not investigate any complaints going back four years which have not previously been considered by the Ombudsman because they happened too long ago and could have been raised sooner. I have however considered how the Council has dealt with Mr X’s requests for reasonable adjustments in recent months.
Mr X asked the Council not to call him on withheld numbers when calling him as a reasonable adjustment, in line with the Equality Act 2010. The Council explained to Mr X that this poses difficulties as its telephone system automatically withholds its telephone numbers, and because staff sometimes use mobile numbers which need to be withheld due for privacy reasons. The Council therefore said that it would make every effort to call him on non-withheld numbers. It said that his social worker would call him on a mobile number which would not be withheld and staff in other departments would call him on a number which shows the Council’s Contact Resolution number.
We cannot decide if an organisation has breached the Equality Act as this can only be done by the courts. But we can make decisions about whether an organisation has properly taken account of an individual’s rights in its treatment of them. In this case the evidence shows that the Council were aware of Mr X’s request and agreed to changes in how it communicates with him. Having considered this point I am satisfied that the Council has taken account of its duties under the Equality Act 2010 in its communications with Mr X, and it is therefore unlikely we would find fault. For this reason, I will not investigate this matter further.
I will not investigate the Council’s decision to restrict Mr X contact under its unreasonable complainants policy. The Council issued Mr X with a warning about his contact, it then implemented restrictions by appointing a single point of contact to deal with his communications. It has since carried out a review and lifted these restrictions. There is no evidence of fault in how it managed the process. Furthermore, now the restrictions have been lifted further investigation would not lead to a different outcome for Mr X.
I will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that staff terminate calls with him when they become aware he is recording them. This is because there is no evidence of fault by the Council. The Council’s unreasonable behaviour policy says that it considers the recording of calls without consent to be unreasonable. Mr X says the policy is unfair and should be changed. However, it is not the Ombudsman’s role to decide what policies the Council implements.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman