The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about highway maintenance because any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
The complaint
Miss Y complained the Council carried out loud roadworks for six nights outside her property without warning, including workers beeping horns and then failed to respond to her complaint about the issue promptly.
Miss Y says this caused her frustration and upset as well as six nights of disturbed sleep.
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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B)) It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.
How I considered this complaint
I considered information Miss Y provided and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Our role is to consider complaints where the person bringing the complaint has suffered significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the organisation. This means we will normally only investigate a complaint where the complainant has suffered a serious loss, harm or distress as a direct result of faults or failures. We will not normally investigate a complaint where the alleged loss of injustice is not a serious or significant matter.
Here, while Miss Y may feel strongly about the matter and had her sleep disturbed, she has not suffered a serious harm as a result of any alleged failure or fault by the Council. As her claimed injustice is not sufficiently significant to warrant use of public money to investigate, we will not carry out an investigation into the issue.
As we are not investigating the substantive issue it is not a good use of public funds to investigate how the council dealt with the complaint. We will not investigate this.
Final decision
We will not investigate Miss Y’s complaint because any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman