Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Ms B’s complaint about the conduct of an officer. Further consideration of the complaint would not achieve any more for Ms B.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Ms B, complains an officer made inappropriate comments and failed to answer her questions when he visited to provide food inspection advice. Ms B also complains about the way the Council then dealt with her subsequent complaint.

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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. I have considered the information Ms B provided and the complaint correspondence between Ms B and the Council. I sent a draft decision to Ms B and invited comments before I made my final decision.

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What I found

4. Ms B has explained she started a new business running a café and paid the Council £120 for it to carry out a consultation visit on how to achieve a five-star food hygiene inspection rating. Ms B complains the officer who visited was in a rush and distracted because his pre-paid car park ticket was about to expire. Ms B says the officer’s alarm kept sounding and he walked away before she had chance to ask all her questions. Ms B also says the officer asked her lots of questions and made comments that were irrelevant and inappropriate.
5. In response to Ms B’s complaint, a complaints officer invited Ms B to come in and discuss her complaint and ‘get things off [her] chest’ Ms B complained this language showed the complaints officer did not take her complaint seriously and she felt disenfranchised.
6. While Ms B remains dissatisfied with the original visit and the way the Council dealt with her complaint, the Ombudsman will not investigate this matter. Further consideration of the complaint is unlikely to achieve any more for Ms B. As a remedy to her complaint, Ms B says she wants the Council to ‘look into the officer’s unacceptable behaviour towards her’. However, the Council has already:
• Discussed the incident with the officer, who has accepted he was in a rush and that affected Ms B’s perception of the visit
• Partially upheld Ms B’s complaint about the officer even though it was not party to any conversation that took place and could not make a finding one way or the other on whether the officer spoke inappropriately
• Offered, in response to Ms B’s suggestion, to send the officer on a refresher equality and diversity course
• Provided a second visit at no cost to ensure Ms B had the opportunity to ask any further questions she felt she did not have time to ask during the first visit
• Agreed the first officer will not carry out future visits to Ms B’s establishment
• Apologised in person and in writing to Ms B that she was offended by the comment about getting things off her chest
• Explained the officer who visited has received no other formal complaints about his behaviour in five years of carrying out his duties
7. The Ombudsman could not make any findings on the way the officer spoke to Ms B. And the Ombudsman has no power to take or recommend action against individual officers. The Council has carried out a thorough review in response to Ms B’s complaints and further consideration of this matter would not achieve any more.

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Final decision

8. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because further consideration of the complaint would not achieve any more for Ms B.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman