Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council response to water leaks at a neighbouring property, and how it dealt with his complaints. There is not enough significant personal injustice caused to him by the matters complained of to warrant an investigation. We do not investigate councils’ complaint-handling and communications in isolation where we are not investigating the core issue giving rise to the complaint.

The complaint

1. Mr X lives next door to a rented property. The Council has used the landlord’s property to house people. Mr X complains the Council:
1. delayed in resolving problems with the soil pipe and a drainpipe at the property;
2. mismanaged his complaint about the matters
2. Mr X says he experienced bad odours and suffered distress from the noise of water falling intermittently from a height onto a concrete doorstep at any time. He says this frequently woke him up during the night. Mr X says this affected his mood as he could never tell when the next spill would occur, putting him on edge. He feels the Council’s complaint reply questioned whether he had been correct that a pipe had been blocked and spilling water.
3. Mr X wants the Council to address all his outstanding questions and issues, explain why some questions have not been answered and why there were errors and omissions in their replies and complaint responses.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. 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:

• 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. There were two issues with the neighbouring property’s pipework. The first one Mr X reported was a leak on the soil pipe. While that case was open, Mr X made a further report that a water pipe on the property was leaking intermittently, dropping water on to the concrete step below.
7. The Council’s attempts to see the problems were delayed by lack of access to view the property. The property was unlet so access needed to be through the landlord and Mr X was unavailable to give access to officers from his home because he had to work. There were faults by the Council in its management of Mr X’s reports, initially passing him to external bodies, the time it took officers to see the property, the coordination between departments involved in or with an interest in the matter, and the time taken before the leaks were resolved.
8. However, while there has been some Council fault here, we will not investigate. We recognise Mr X experienced odours from the soil pipe, and intermittent noise from the other pipe leaking water from higher up the property, affecting his sleep and mood. The Council might have resolved these issues causing Mr X’s injustice sooner, but it would have taken some time for them to do so. The additional odour, noise and disturbance Mr X had because of delays in getting the issues fixed do not amount to such significant personal injustice to him here to justify us investigating.
9. Much of Mr X’s complaint, including his dissatisfaction with some of the officers’ wording and the outcome he seeks from his complaint, relates to the Council’s communication with him and its internal complaint-handling process. We do not investigate councils’ correspondence and complaint processes in isolation where we are not investigating the core issue 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 part of the complaint.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because:
• there is not enough significant personal injustice caused to him by the matters complained of to warrant an investigation; and
• we do not investigate councils’ complaint-handling and communications in isolation where we are not investigating the core issue giving rise to the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman