Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s maintenance of graves in a cemetery. It is for the Council to decide how to maintain the graves and it is unlikely we would find fault or that we could achieve anything for Mrs X.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains the Council killed the grass and bulbs around her parents’ graves while maintaining a cemetery. She also complains the Council has refused to stop maintaining the land around the graves to avoid further damage in the future.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• it is unlikely we would find fault, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I reviewed Mrs X’s complaint and the Council’s response. I shared my draft decision with Mrs X and considered her comments.

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What I found

4. Mrs X’s parents are buried in a council cemetery. She visits once a month to pay her respects and maintain the plot. She has also planted bulbs around her parents’ headstones.
5. The Council recently applied a chemical weed-killer around the headstones as part of its maintenance schedule but Mrs X is upset about the way it now looks. She says the weed-killer has killed the grass and bulbs she planted previously. She wants the Council to stop maintaining the area around her parents’ headstones and says she is happy to continue doing this herself.
6. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. The Council has explained the reasons it used a chemical weed-killer rather than a strimmer and it is not for us to question its approach. The Council is required to maintain the whole of the cemetery and we could not reasonably expect it to exclude specific graves from its routine maintenance. The land remains under the Council’s ownership and the Local Authorities’ Cemeteries Order 1977 allows it to “do all such things as [it considers] necessary…” to manage it. It is therefore unlikely we would find fault by the Council or that we could tell the Council to remove the graves from its maintenance schedule as Mrs X wants.

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Final decision

7. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is unlikely we would find fault by the Council or that we could achieve any worthwhile outcome for Mrs X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman