Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council missing some of her bin collections. The matters complained of did not cause Mrs X such a significant personal injustice to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains the Council has failed to empty her bin on the correct collection day. She says the matter has caused her inconvenience, and mentions health issues from rubbish attracting vermin to her house. Mrs X wants the Council to collect her waste, and tell her what they are going to put in place to make sure it is collected.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information from Mrs X, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

4. The Council has not collected Mrs X’s bin on the correct weekday about two times since March 2022. We recognise crews not emptying bins on the usual day causes frustration and inconvenience from having to report the error and try to have them collected later. Mrs X also refers to uncollected waste attracting vermin, but she does not say this has happened at her house. The reported number of missed or delayed collections have not caused Mrs X such a significant personal injustice to justify us investigating.
5. After Mrs X’s first formal Council complaint, officers did not respond substantively to her further emails on the matter. The Council also gave Mrs X two responses to her second formal complaint. One reply referred her to the Ombudsman, but a further letter sent the next day indicated the officer had forwarded her complaint to a different Council team who would give another response. It appears the Council may itself contact Mrs X again on this matter. But in any event, we do not investigate councils’ internal complaint-handling 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. This limitation applies here so we will not investigate this issue.

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Final decision

6. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because:
• the matters complained of have not caused her such significant personal injustice to warrant us investigating;
• we do not investigate councils’ complaints processes in isolation where we are not investigating the core issues which gave rise to the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman