Thurrock Council (25 021 353)
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with Mr X’s formal complaint. It would be disproportionate to investigate the Council’s complaint handling on its own.
The complaint
- Mr X complains the Council took too long to tell him it would not deal with a complaint he had made. Mr X says this caused him and his family distress and lost opportunity to pursue the matter he had complained about.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mr X complained to the Council about problems with a trip his children should have attended. He says the Council took too long to tell him that the provider of the trip was not a Council service and therefore it could not take action on his complaint.
- As the substantive underlying matter Mr X complained to the Council about (the trip) was not about a Council service, we cannot investigate it.
- I realise Mr X’s complaint to us is about the Council’s complaint-handling, not about the trip. However, we do not investigate councils’ complaint-handling in isolation where we are not investigating the underlying issues giving rise to the complaint. It is not a good use of our resources to do so. I appreciate Mr X was frustrated the Council did not tell him sooner that it was not involved with the trip so would not deal with his complaint, which he says meant he did not contact the relevant organisation himself sooner. However, I do not consider the Council’s handling of the complaint caused Mr X significant enough injustice to warrant the Ombudsman devoting time and public money to pursuing the complaint.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. The Council’s complaint-handling did not in itself cause significant enough injustice to warrant investigation, and it would be disproportionate to investigate the Council’s complaint-handling in isolation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman