The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about highway maintenance and repair because any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
The complaint
Mr y complained the Council partially resurfaced a road near his home but did not complete the full resurfacing. He is also unhappy the Council then denied resurfacing the road in its complaint response.
Mr Y says the issue has caused him frustration.
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))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information Mr 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.
The road Mr Y has complained about is a dead-end and while near his home, is not the road he lives on. While he may like the road to be repaired fully, and may have experienced some frustration or annoyance about it, we would not consider the issue to be sufficiently serious a distress to justify our involvement. Consequently, we will not investigate the complaint.
As we are not investigating the substantive issue it is not a good use of public resources to investigate the way the Council dealt with and responded to the complaint. We will not investigate.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr Y’s complaint because any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman