Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s call handling. This is because any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. Also, we consider there would be no worthwhile outcome from further investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council’s call handlers hung up his calls twice on the same day. He said he was not rude during the calls and had simply called to ask for some information.
2. He said he asked for a call back from a manager, but this was refused.
3. Mr X says the call handlers should not have hung up on him because he is a person who requires reasonable adjustments. Mr X says the Council discriminated against him when it ended the phone calls.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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:

• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement: or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

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

5. We cannot decide if an organisation has breached the Equality Act as this can only be done by the courts. But we can make decisions about whether an organisation has properly taken account of an individual’s rights in its treatment of them.

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

8. Mr X says the Council hung up two of his calls on the same day. He said he asked for a manager’s call back, but this was refused. However, the Council said its call handlers hung up Mr X’s calls because his challenging behaviour upset them.
9. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because any injustice in this matter is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
10. In any case, a further investigation would not achieve anything worthwhile because there are no call recordings or transcripts available. Where it is one person’s word against the other, we cannot make a finding on what happened.
11. The Council said the call handlers tried to get more information about Mr X’s reasonable adjustments but could not do so because of his challenging behaviour.
12. We cannot decide if the Council discriminated against him by terminating his calls as the Council does not routinely record its calls. However, it is open to Mr X to write to the Council and explain what disabilities he has and the reasonable adjustments he needs.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because any injustice is not significant enough to warrant our involvement and we consider an investigation would not achieve a worthwhile outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman