Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council not investigating the condition of some listed buildings, and not processing his complaint. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making process to warrant us investigating. There is insufficient significant personal injustice to Mr X to justify an investigation. We do not investigate council complaint-handling where we are not investigating the core issues giving rise to the complaint.

The complaint

1. Mr X’s father lived in a listed building owned and run by a charity. He complains the Council:
1. is not investigating in response to his reports of the charity neglecting its buildings;
2. has failed to investigate his complaint.
2. Mr X says his father died in one of the buildings and he is upset at their poor state. He says the buildings’ condition also affects an elderly lady who lives there.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact 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 or continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating; or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained; or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information from Mr X and the Council, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Councils’ powers to deal with the condition of buildings are discretionary ones. We may only go behind a council’s decision where there is evidence their decision-making process has been flawed, and but for those errors a different decision would have been made. We cannot replace a council’s decision with our or someone else’s opinion where the decision has been properly reached.
7. In response to Mr X’s report the charity’s buildings were being neglected, a conservation officer from the Council visited. They recognised the buildings are not in a perfectly maintained state but had no current conservation concerns about their condition. Officers gathered relevant information about the buildings by visiting and decided the condition of the buildings did not warrant them taking any action at this time. That was a decision officers were entitled to make, using their professional judgement. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making process here to justify us investigating. We recognise Mr X disagrees, but it is not fault for a council to properly make a decision with which someone disagrees.
8. Even if there was fault by the Council here, we will not investigate. We recognise Mr X is upset at what he believes to be the neglect of a building where his father lived and died. But that upset is not a sufficiently significant personal injustice to him to warrant us investigating. We note Mr X says an elderly lady and former neighbour of his father still lives in one of the buildings and is affected by its condition. But the condition of her property and any impact it may have on her is not a personal injustice to Mr X.
9. Mr X complained about the Council’s response, but officers declined to deal with the matter as a complaint. We do not investigate councils’ complaint-handling in isolation where we are not investigating the core issues which gave rise to the complaint. It is not a good use of our resources to do so. That limitation applies here so we will not investigate this issue.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because:
• there is not enough evidence of Council fault to warrant an investigation; and
• there is insufficient significant personal injustice caused to him by the matters complained of to justify us investigating; and
• we do not investigate councils’ complaint-handling where we are not investigating the issues giving rise to the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman