Summary: Ms X complains the Council failed to progress her complaints made about failures by its officers to answer questions she had posed concerning flood defences. We will not investigate the complaint because there are insufficient grounds to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to as Ms X, says the Council failed to progress complaints she made about officers failing to respond to questions she posed about the lack of maintenance to flood defences. She says the Council has failed to answer crucial questions leaving her life and property at risk.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. In considering the complaint I reviewed the information provided by Ms X and the Council. I gave Ms X the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

4. Ms X lives adjacent to the River Avon on an estate constructed on reclaimed land. Concerned about inadequate flood defences and that her property may become liable to flooding, she contacted different Council officers with a number of queries about this topic.
5. As she did not receive responses to her communications, Ms X made a complaint against the two officers she had contacted (Officer A and Officer B) and then about a third officer (Officer C) who told her Officer A would be replying to her queries. Officer C also told Ms X that while he understood she was concerned about the flooding issue, he considered her actions were becoming unreasonable and that if this behaviour continued, he would become her single point of contact.
6. Unhappy with this, and that she had yet to receive the responses she wanted to the numerous questions she had raised, Ms X complained to us.
7. As the Council had not had the opportunity to address Ms X’s complaint at the final stage of its complaints procedure, the Chief Executive then wrote to Ms X. He explained why Officer C had sent the advisory email stating that if her behaviour in continuing to contact Officer B when she had been told Officer A would be replying continued, Officer C would consider putting in place the single point of contact for her communication with the Council.
8. He further explained why her complaint about delay in responding to the Stage 1 complaint had not been progressed but he apologised for the delay in responding to her and acknowledged that she should have had a response from his colleagues much earlier.

Assessment

9. The Council’s handling of Ms X’s concerns and complaints could have been better dealt with. However, the Council did respond to the queries she raised with its email of 2 October from Officer A. Matters did become somewhat confused with Ms X raising numerous queries with more than one officer and then making complaints about a lack of response from those officers. To avoid any further confusion, if Ms X has any further queries about flood defences etc then she can contact Officer A again setting out these outstanding queries clearly.
10. We are a publicly funded body and must use the funds allocated to us in an efficient, effective and economic manner. We do not investigate every complaint we receive. In this case I do not consider there are sufficient grounds to warrant a formal investigation by the Ombudsman into the complaint.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because there are insufficient grounds to warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman