The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about a failure to provide him with information about disabled facilities grants. Any injustice is not significant enough to warrant our involvement.
The complaint
Mr X complains the Council failed to provide him with information he requested about eligibility for a disabled facilities grant. He says this has left him feeling unsupported and caused distress. He wants the Council to apologise and provide him with the requested information.
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, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X complained to the Council about noise nuisance from a neighbour. As part of his complaint, he asked the Council for information about his eligibility and the application process for a disabled facilities grant to allow him to install noise mitigating adaptations.
In its complaint response, the Council set out how it had investigated his noise complaint. It said although its investigations had not gathered any evidence of loud noise, it planned to inspect the neighbour’s property to ensure they had adequate flooring. The outcome of this inspection would determine whether it would take any further action.
We will not investigate this complaint. Although the Council’s complaint response did not provide information about disabled facilities grants, it did respond to the substantive issue of his complaint about noise nuisance and told him of action it planned to take to address his concerns. Information about disabled facilities grants is readily available on the Council’s website. I do not consider the failure to include information about disabled facilities grants in the complaint response caused a significant enough injustice to warrant our involvement.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because any injustice is not significant enough to warrant our involvement.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman