Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s response to a complaint about private hire vehicle licensing. There is no significant injustice and no worthwhile outcome achievable.

The complaint

1. X complains the Council has failed to take effective action against the drivers of private hire vehicles (PHV) who drive with their fog lights unnecessarily illuminated. X says this causes inconvenience and wants the Council to carry out monthly enforcement patrols to deter this behaviour.
2. X is also unhappy with the Council’s communication on this matter.

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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 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 injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34(B))
4. We will not usually investigate complaint handling and complaints about communication failures if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant and I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. X complained to the Council about repeated instances of drivers of PHVs unnecessarily using their fog lights, causing inconvenience. X said the advice the Council gave was unhelpful and meant they were left without a resolution.
7. I will not investigate this complaint. We do not investigate all the complaints we receive. We only investigate those where there is clear fault by the Council and there is a significant public interest in exposing and correcting it. The injustice also needs to amount to serious harm or loss.
8. I am not satisfied the injustice X claims, because of the fault they allege, meets the threshold for an investigation. In any case, we could not direct the Council to carry out the enforcement activity that X is looking for or achieve any other meaningful outcome that meets the wider public interest by investigating this complaint.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate X’s complaint because there is no significant injustice and no worthwhile outcome achievable.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman