Thanet District Council (21 018 170)
Category : Environment and regulation > Refuse and recycling
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 24 Mar 2022
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about the Council missing some of her weekly waste collections, because the injustice caused is not significant enough to warrant us investigating.
The complaint
- Ms X complains the Council has missed four of her weekly household waste collections, between September 2021 and early March 2022.
- Ms X says this has meant she has had to store bags of rubbish in her small flat, which might attract rats or other pests. To avoid this, Ms X says she has paid someone to take the rubbish to the tip as nobody in her household can drive.
- Ms X wants the Council to put something in place to stop the missed collections and acknowledge it is an ongoing problem, not down to human error.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6)).
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information from Ms X, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Ms X reports the Council missed her weekly general waste collection about four times in a period of just over five months. During that time, she should have received a total of over 20 collections.
- We recognise Ms X has been put to some inconvenience by the missed collections, as she had to either store her rubbish for a further week, or dispose of it another way. But the personal injustice caused to her and her household by the number of missed collections within the time period is not sufficiently significant to warrant us investigating.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because the personal injustice caused to Ms X is not significant enough to warrant us investigating.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman