The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about parking permit pricing because any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
The complaint
Mr Y complained the Council has increased parking permit fees without suitable justification for this. He is also unhappy with the content of the Council’s complaint response.
Mr Y says the parking permit fee has increased by 50% from £25 per year to £37.50. He does not feel this is fair and is unhappy with the extra charge.
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 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.
While Mr Y may be unhappy with the price increase and may disagree with the Council’s justification for this as part of its complaint response, he has not suffered a significant personal injustice as a result of the Council’s actions. We must use public resources carefully and where we decide any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, we can decide not to start or continue an investigation. As that is the case here, we will not investigate.
As we are not investigating the substantive issue in this matter, we will not investigate how the Council dealt with Mr Y’s complaint.
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