Trafford Council (19 017 972)

Category : Environment and regulation > Refuse and recycling

Decision : Upheld

Decision date : 13 Mar 2020

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s failure to collect her neighbour’s rubbish. The Council has taken action to address the issue and Mrs X has no significant unremedied injustice for which we would recommend any further remedy.

The complaint

  1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains the Council failed to collect her neighbour’s refuse and recycling, allowing rubbish to pile up in their garden and create a health hazard.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

  1. 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
  • the Council has provided a suitable remedy.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6) and 24A(7), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

  1. I reviewed Mrs X’s complaint and the Council’s responses. I shared my draft decision with Mrs X and considered her comments.

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What I found

  1. Mrs X contacted the Council in 2019 to report her neighbour’s bins were overflowing and had not been collected. Her neighbour is elderly and the Council confirms they are signed up for an assisted collection, but due to a change in personnel the crew had not collected the bins as they should.
  2. Mrs X says the Council initially misunderstood the issue and monitored her bin collection rather than the neighbour’s, but this has now been resolved. The Council has replaced the neighbour’s bin to reduce the build-up of refuse at the property and has spoken to the crew to ensure the bins are collected as they should be. Mrs X reported one further missed collection but the Council says there have been no other such reports for more than two months.
  3. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. Mrs X has raised the complaint in her own right, rather than on behalf of her neighbour, and the Council has investigated the issue and provided a suitable resolution. It is therefore unlikely we would recommend anything more.
  4. Mrs X is not an adjoining neighbour and does not herself claim significant injustice from the issue complained about. While the state of the neighbour’s front garden affected the appearance of the area this is not significant enough to warrant our further involvement in this matter, particularly as there have been no further reports of missed collections for more than two months.
  5. Mrs X is also unhappy with the way the Council has dealt with her complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

  1. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council has taken action to resolve the issue and it is unlikely we would recommend anything further.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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