Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about an alleged conflict of interest by a council officer who dealt with his complaint. This is because the issue did not cause Mr X significant enough injustice to warrant investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the Council’s handling of his complaint about an antisocial behaviour matter. He says the officer who responded to the complaint had links to the original antisocial behaviour officer involved in the case, creating a clear conflict of interest. He raised this with the Council but it declined to comment. Mr X says this has left him feeling his complaint was not fairly or impartially investigated.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect 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 an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
3. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. We do not investigate all the complaints we receive. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the alleged injustice to the person complaining. We only investigate the most serious complaints.
7. For this reason we will not normally investigate a complaint about a council’s complaints handling unless we are investigating the issue complained about, as it would not be a good use of public resources to do so.
8. The substantive issue in this case concerns the Council’s handling of an antisocial behaviour case against Mr X. Mr X complained about two officers involved in the matter, which led to a written warning being issued to him. Mr X felt there were no good reasons for this action and questioned the reasons for the warning as part of his complaint.
9. The complaint response confirmed that by the date of the response, the warning had expired. It therefore had no effect at that time. Had Mr X been unhappy with the response to the complaint Mr X could have referred his complaint to us, as set out in the response itself. But he did not. He is only complaining now because he has undertaken research into the officer who dealt with his complaint and found a link with a relative of the original antisocial behaviour officer.
10. I do not consider this link, which is indirect and does not clearly show any bias towards the officer, causes Mr X significant injustice or significantly undermines the response to his complaint. It was ultimately a matter of professional judgement for the officers involved to issue Mr X the warning and it is not the role of the complaints process to overrule such action or to question an officer’s judgement. Had Mr X felt the warning was unjustified it would have been reasonable for him to complain to us about it at the time. But given the expiry of the warning and lack of any further action, I could not say Mr X suffered significant injustice from this issue to warrant further investigation, either.
11. Mr X has also raised concerns about a possible breach of data protection, but this is more appropriately a matter for the Information Commissioner and I have seen nothing to suggest it would be unreasonable to expect Mr X to raise it with them.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the issue Mr X has complained about did not cause him significant enough injustice to warrant investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman