Manchester City Council (23 000 836)
Category : Benefits and tax > Housing benefit and council tax benefit
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 31 May 2023
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the way the Council’s contact centre handled a call from Ms B because there is not enough evidence the Council is at fault or caused Ms B significant enough injustice to warrant investigation.
The complaint
- Ms B complains about the way a member of the Council’s contact centre staff spoke to her and handled her call when she wished to get a message to the manager who is her named point of contact.
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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or 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 provided by the complainant and background information from a previous case.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- In the past Ms B has taken excessive officer time with unfocused and rambling telephone calls which achieve little. The Council has therefore given her a named, single point of contact. It is not fault for it to do this, nor is it at fault for not accepting contact from Ms B any other way.
- Ms B’s description of what happened when she called the Council’s contact centre suggests the member of staff declined to have a discussion with her or pass on a message as Ms B wanted, but ended the call. I recognise Ms B may have been upset by this, but we could not say the Council has caused her serious injustice if she did not keep to the arrangements the Council has made for her to contact a named officer only.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Ms B’s complaint because there is not enough evidence the Council is at fault or caused Ms B significant enough injustice to warrant investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman