The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about having to pay a charge for entering the Council’s clean air zone. This is because the amount of the charge- £8- is not significant enough to warrant investigation.
The complaint
The complainant, Mr X, complains he had to pay the Council’s clean air zone (CAZ) charge when he was diverted into the zone from the motorway in May 2024 to avoid receiving a penalty charge notice.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
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 Mr X and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
We do not investigate all the complaints we receive. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the alleged injustice to the person complaining. We only investigate the most serious complaints.
I appreciate Mr X considers he should not have to pay the charge but the amount of the charge (£8) is not significant enough to warrant investigation.
Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with his complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the issue did not cause Mr X significant injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman