Summary: Mr D complains about how the Council responded to his complaints about parking issues in his area. The Ombudsman finds no fault by the Council in respect of the substantive matters. There was fault in the Council’s handling of the complaint, but that did not cause a significant injustice to Mr D requiring the recommendation of a remedy.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr D, complains about the way the Council dealt with parking issues in his area. He considers his complaint was mismanaged and that he was treated unfairly, causing him inconvenience. He would like a single yellow line on the highway outside his home.

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What I have investigated

2. I have investigated how the Council dealt with matters relevant to his complaint from the date of his contact about the matter in February 2019.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered all the information provided to me by Mr D about his complaint I made written enquiries of the Council and took account of the information it provided in response.
7. I provided Mr D and the Council with a draft of this decision, giving them the opportunity to comment. I considered all comments received in response.

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What I found

8. On 12 February 2019 Mr D sent an email to the Council about parking in the area around his home. He said that since the Council had introduced single yellow lines in neighbouring streets, employees from nearby businesses were now parking problematically outside his home and in the adjacent side road. He felt that the Council should have taken steps in anticipation of this happening. He wanted a single yellow line restriction outside his home.
9. The Council issued a response on 1 March 2019, acknowledging Mr D’s correspondence as a corporate complaint. In its response the Council advised parking across dropped kerbs to private driveways could be reported to its parking enforcement team to investigate, and that parking on footways or near a junction where no parking restrictions are evident would be a matter for the police.
   Insofar as the introduction of parking restrictions on the estate was concerned, the Council explained the possibility of a resident’s permit parking scheme to include Mr D’s road had been considered some years previously in response to concerns by local residents. Consultations took place with residents but overall support for the scheme was not great enough for the scheme to go ahead. The Council said that if Mr D wished the Council to look again at a permit parking scheme for his road, the set-up costs would need to be met by the residents. It provided information about the costs. Alternatively, if Mr D wished to apply for prohibitive waiting restrictions like those in place elsewhere on the estate, the Council would need a collective petition from residents indicating their support for the introduction of such restrictions. The Council explained that a petition of support minimises the possibility of objections from those properties which would be directly affected, should a legal Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) be proposed.
10. The Council’s response advised that Mr D could take his complaint further if dissatisfied, by contacting it within ten days.
11. Mr D did request escalation of his complaint, although he did not do so until 7 May 2019. Mr D said that he had been in communication with the Council about parking issues in the area for several years and had been providing photographic evidence of the problem but had not received responses. In the meantime, the introduction of restrictions to other parts of the estate had exacerbated the problem around his house. He did not consider it was his responsibility to rally the neighbours into providing a petition. He re-stated that he wanted single yellow lines introduced in his road.
12. The Council replied on 23 May 2019 acknowledging Mr D’s concerns but saying that without any further supporting evidence (such as a petition) from the other residents, it could not promote the restrictions he wanted. It sent Mr D a plan illustrating the extent of restrictions which it could justify, around some highway junctions. It said these could be included in the next application for a TRO which was due to be advertised in July. It invited Mr D to submit his comments on these proposals. It said that should support be forthcoming from residents for more comprehensive parking restrictions in the future, it would reassess that request and if necessary include them within a future TRO. The Council reiterated the role of its enforcement team in dealing with parking over dropped kerbs and provided a copy of the relevant enforcement policy.
13. Mr D wrote back to the Council on 2 July 2019. He reiterated his complaint, said he was not satisfied with the responses received, and wished to have his complaint escalated. He said he had not had any explanation of why it had taken so long to get a reply to the issues he had been raising over several years.
14. On 26 September the Council issued a response at Stage 2 of its complaints procedure. Under the Council’s complaints procedure, the target timescale for response at this stage is 20 working days: the delay by the Council was fault. The Stage 2 response did not acknowledge the delay.
15. In its response the Council said that the single yellow line parking restrictions had been introduced on the estate in response to petitions from residents (two petitions from residents in two roads in 2014 and 2015. The restrictions appeared reasonable to the Council and permitted by law, and as significant local support was evidenced by the petitions it followed the process required for the making of a TRO, resulting in the implementation of restrictions in accordance with residents’ wishes.
16. The Council said that where a complaint is made about traffic conditions that do not entail a public safety risk then it will only progress the matter if there is evidence the issue is shared by a significant proportion of the relevant community. It explained that its prime responsibility is highway safety which absorbs nearly all its available capacity and it cannot afford to undertake exercises to solicit the views of the wider community on the basis of a single complaint. It said this was the reason Mr D had been advised to seek the views of his neighbours. It confirmed that this had been its consistent position and where other roads in the area had seen the introduction of restrictions these had bene supported by petitions of residents. Mr D’s request had not been supported in this way. The Council did not therefore agree that he had been unfairly treated.
17. Regarding failure to respond to Mr D’s contacts and complaints in the period before 2019 it accepted that its level of service had been very poor, and it apologised. It explained there had been issues with the capacity of the relevant team being required for higher priority work and acknowledged that Mr D should have been told of this at the time. The Council said site visits had been made and parking on the junctions had been reassessed in light of Mr D’s complaint in 2019, after which it had set out proposed restrictions (double yellow lines) for those areas and invited Mr D’s comments. It understood Mr D had objected to those proposed restrictions.

Analysis

18. While acknowledging Mr D’s concerns about inconsiderate parking in the vicinity of his home, the Council was not under any obligation to introduce the kind of parking restrictions he would like, nor to invest in consultations with residents based on his concerns or complaints. The Council must have regard to the use of public funds: commissioning surveys which may not be productive or pressing ahead with formally advertising proposals which may then not be supported by residents are reasonable considerations for the Council to take into account. The Council has made site visits and has not concluded there are highway safety grounds for it to introduce the restrictions Mr D would like. That is a decision the Council is entitled to make, exercising professional judgment. The Council has appropriately advised Mr D how he can progress his request if he secures the support of his neighbours, and about the roles of the enforcement team and the police in addressing unlawful parking.
19. Except for delay in responding to Mr D’s complaint, referred to at paragraph 13 above, the Council’s actions in this matter were not affected by fault. That delay did not in itself cause a significant injustice to Mr D which would warrant the Ombudsman making a formal recommendation for remedy.

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Final decision

20. I have completed my investigation on the basis set out above.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

21. Although Mr D had been communicating with the Council about parking matters over several years, I did not investigate matters prior to February 2019 for the reasons set out in paragraph above. Mr D could have complained sooner about that earlier period and there are no good grounds for me to exercise discretion to look at events from that time now.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman