Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s failure to collect his household waste. This is because the Council has provided Mr X with containers to store and present his waste for collection and it is unlikely we would find fault in its actions or that we could achieve anything more for him.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council has not collected household waste from his property since the introduction of wheelie bins in 2012. As a result he has made hundreds of trips to his local household waste recycling centre to dispose of his waste.

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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, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.

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

3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I reviewed Mr X’s complaint, made enquiries of the Council and considered its response. I shared my draft decision with Mr X and invited his comments.

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What I found

5. Mr X lives in a small property with no outdoor space to keep recycling/refuse containers. He contacted the Council in June 2019 to complain he had been transporting his household waste to the local recycling centre twice a week since the Council introduced wheelie bins in 2012 but he believed the Council should be taking it instead. He said he had no room inside his property to store refuse or recycling containers and invited the Council to send someone to his property to see for themselves.
6. The Council explained to Mr X that it had no record of any contact from him about the issue and could not resolve a problem it did not know existed. It confirmed it had offered bins or bags but that he had no room to store them away from the pavement. It sent its contractor to his property to discuss his options but Mr X says this resolved the issue only temporarily. He says he has nowhere to keep bins or bags and once a commercial premises which is currently closed, re-opens, he will again have nowhere to keep his household waste.
7. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. I have seen nothing to suggest the Council knew about Mr X’s problems before his complaint in 2019 and we could not say it was at fault for not resolving a situation it did not know existed. Any complaint about the Council’s missed collections between 2012 and 2018 are also late.
8. When Mr X contacted the Council to report the issues it responded promptly and offered to send its waste contractor to his property to assist in finding a solution. It has now provided Mr X with waste/recycling containers and although this resolves the issues only temporarily this is because of the size and layout of Mr X’s property rather than any fault by the Council.
9. The Council has a duty to collect household waste but it is entitled to set the means and frequency of its collections. Mr X has previously travelled to his local household waste recycling centre twice a week to dispose of his waste but the Council cannot be expected to carry out collections on the same basis. The issue in this case concerns the space Mr X has available to store his refuse and recycling between collections and not that the Council has failed to provide containers to store and from which to collect his waste.
10. Mr X now has containers in which to store his waste and it is unlikely we could achieve anything more for him.

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Final decision

11. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is unlikely we would find fault by the Council or that we could achieve any worthwhile outcome for Mr X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman