Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of Mr X’s street trading licence application. This is because the Council’s actions did not cause Mr X significant injustice.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council failed to process or issue a decision on his application for a street trading licence and denied him his right of appeal. He says it then failed to respond to his appeal and his further correspondence about the matter, and did not properly deal with his complaint.
2. Mr X says the Council’s actions denied him the opportunity to trade for more than a year, resulted in loss of income and caused him stress and uncertainty.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

5. 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.
6. I appreciate Mr X is frustrated the Council did not process or issue a decision on his application and that it failed to respond to his correspondence, but this is not significant enough to warrant investigation.
7. The Council has confirmed it is not currently accepting applications for street trading licences as there are no pitches available. In these circumstances we would have expected it to inform Mr X that his application, which it treated as invalid, would not be processed but I cannot say its failure to do so caused Mr X significant injustice. This is because we cannot say the Council should have granted Mr X a licence or speculate that any appeal to the magistrates’ court against its refusal to do so, would have been successful.
8. Mr X suggests the Council should consider providing additional isolated pitches in some areas but there is no requirement for it to do so, nor any guarantee that Mr X would be successful in getting a licence if it did. The Council has explained that any vacancies are open to all who wish to apply and it is therefore conceivable that it may have decided to issue a licence to another applicant over Mr X, with each application considered against its street trading policy.
9. Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with his complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council’s actions did not cause Mr X significant injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman