The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about information provided by the Council to Mr X concerning public expenditure. This is because Mr X has appeal rights to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) which places the complaint outside our jurisdiction and because he has not suffered personal injustice sufficient to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
Mr X complains the Council provided him with inaccurate and misleading information in response to his FOI requests relating to public expenditure and about the way it handled his complaint about the matter.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone has a right of appeal, reference or review to a tribunal about the same matter. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to use this right. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended) The Information Commissioner's Office considers complaints about freedom of information. Its decision notices may be appealed to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). So where we receive complaints about freedom of information, we normally consider it reasonable to expect the person to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.
We investigate 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 continue 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. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
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 restriction highlighted at paragraph 3 applies to Mr X ‘s complaint. If he is unhappy with the FOI responses made by the Council, it is open to him to pursue his complaint to the First Tier Tribunal. As he has this alternative remedy available which we would reasonably expect him to use, the complaint falls outside our jurisdiction and will not be investigated.
Moreover, we do not investigate every complaint and we will not investigate where any injustice caused to the complainant is not significant enough to warrant our involvement.
We will not investigate complaint handling matters when we are not investigating the substantive issue.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because he has appeal rights to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) which places the complaint outside our jurisdiction and because he has not suffered personal injustice sufficient to warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman