What we can look at
Subject of complaint
We can look at complaints about most council services including:
- Housing
- Planning
- Education
- Social care
- Housing benefit
- Council tax
- Transport and highways
- Environment and waste
- Neighbour nuisance and antisocial behaviour
We can only look at housing matters when it is provided by the council. Complaints about housing associations and some other social landlords are dealt with by the Housing Ombudsman Service.
We can carry out joint investigations with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (for example, on complaints which are about a council’s social services department and the NHS). See our fact sheet on the Regulatory Reform Order (see box on right of page).
Types of fault
We can look at complaints about things that have gone wrong:
- in the way a service has been delivered
- if a service has not been delivered at all, or
- the way a decision has been made
that has caused problems for you. But we cannot question what a council has done simply because you do not agree with it.
Examples of fault
Examples might be if the council:
- takes too long to do something
- does not follow its own rules or the law
- breaks its promises
- treats you unfairly
- gives you wrong information or bad advice, or
- does not make a decision in the right way, for example, does not follow the right procedures when making the decision.
Examples of the problems this has caused might be if you:
- did not get a service or benefit you were entitled to or there was a delay before you got it
- suffered financial loss, or
- were put to a lot of avoidable expense, trouble or inconvenience.
However, we might not investigate your complaint if we consider that the affect on you is only slight, or if the council has already taken, or is willing to take, satisfactory action to resolve it.
If we find that something has gone wrong which has caused problems for you, we can ask the council to take action to put the matter right. We do this in more than a quarter of the cases we investigate. See Putting things right.
Date Updated: 11/02/09