Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of her claim for compensation for damage to her vehicle. This is because the main issue concerns the Council’s liability for the damage and it would be reasonable for Mrs X to make a claim against it at court.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains the Council provided misleading information about the process for claiming compensation for damage to her vehicle which resulted from hitting a pothole in the road. She says the Council discriminated against her, told her she could submit new information for a review of her claim and failed to respond to her correspondence. She also says it told her to make new ‘freedom of information’ requests but then blocked her from doing so.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
5. The Information Commissioner's Office considers complaints about freedom of information. Its decision notices may be appealed to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). So where we receive complaints about freedom of information, we normally consider it reasonable to expect the person to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by Mrs X and the Council.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Mrs X suffered damage to her vehicle when she hit a pothole in the road. She made a claim to the Council for compensation but the Council refused it.
9. Mrs X says she asked the Council to clarify its processes for deciding pothole claims and relates this to her disability. But she says she has not received a response and considers this to be discrimination.
10. Mrs X also says the Council told her to go through data she received in response to her ‘freedom of information’ request and submit her findings to the Council as part of a request for a review of its decision to refuse her claim. However, having done this, the Council told her there was no right to a review. She says this made her feel stressed and wasted her time.
11. The main issue here concerns the damage to Mrs X’s vehicle and the Council’s decision to refuse her claim for compensation. But this concerns a question of liability and the law provides the Council with a defence against claims which it would not be appropriate for us to stop it from using. It would therefore be reasonable for Mrs X to make a claim against the Council at court if she wishes to pursue this issue. We cannot provide her with the outcome she wants, which includes the Council accepting and paying her claim in full.
12. I understand Mrs X felt stressed and that she had wasted her time but the issues she has described did not cause her significant enough injustice to warrant investigation. Any time Mrs X took to go through the Council’s records was spent at risk it would still refuse to pay her claim and any information she believed was relevant may be used as part of a claim against the Council at court.
13. While Mrs X claims discrimination by the Council it is not for us to decide if the Council discriminated against her; this is a matter for the courts. Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s refusal to accept further ‘freedom of information’ requests is also a matter which is more appropriate for another body- the Information Commissioner. They can decide if Mrs X has been wrongly denied access to further information and, if they find she has, they may direct the Council to release the information. This is not an outcome we can achieve.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the main issue concerns a dispute over liability for damage to Mrs X’s vehicle and it would be reasonable for Mrs X to make a claim against the Council at court.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman