Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about grass cuttings being left outside of his house. This is because Mr X has not been caused a significant enough personal injustice to warrant our involvement.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains that the Council has left debris from grass cuttings outside his house.
2. Mr X says that he is unhappy about having to clear up the grass cuttings left by the Council.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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 the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information Mr X provided as part of his complaint. I wrote to Mr X with my draft decision and gave him an opportunity to comment.

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What I found

5. Mr X complains that the Council has left grass cuttings outside of his house.
6. Whilst Mr X is unhappy, I would consider that leaving the grass cuttings outside of Mr X’s house does not demonstrate a significant enough personal injustice. For this reason, we will not investigate.
7. The lack of significant personal injustice in this instance would mean that it would not be a good use of public money to justify the our involvement to investigate this complaint.

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Final decision

8. My view is that the Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is insufficient personal injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman