Summary: We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the Council not collecting her recycling waste and how it dealt with her complaints. There is not enough significant personal injustice caused to Miss X by the recycling collection issue to warrant investigation. We do not investigate complaints about council complaint-handling where we are not investigating the matters which gave rise to the complaint.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council:
1. failed to collect her cardboard recycling waste because it was not in the required bag, when it had previously been collected without being in a bag;
2. lost her original complaint and failed to properly handle her further complaint.
2. Miss X says the matters have caused her stress, she has spent time spent contacting the Council and making numerous visits to the recycling centre when the waste was not collected.
3. She wants the Council to improve its complaint process at stage one, recognise there was an error in her first complaint going missing, provide her with a recycling bag and make a ‘goodwill gesture’ for the time spent and stress caused.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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 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 Miss X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. The core service issue here which gave rise to the complaint was the recycling bin collections. Had Miss X not had concerns about that service, she would not have complained so the complaints about the subsequent Council complaint process are secondary ones.
7. Miss X says the Council missed recycling collections. She says they had previously taken loose cardboard but then did not. Officers advised the Council required cardboard to be put into a recycling waste bag. Miss X considers the Council should have told her for the need for the bag when she asked for other bin equipment, at a time when it was not making a charge for their delivery. There may have been inconsistency in the way the Council collected the cardboard waste, leading to some missed collections. We recognise Miss X was inconvenienced because she had take the waste to the recycling centre, and the Council has made a £2.50 charge for the delivery of the recycling bag. But these do not amount to a sufficiently significant personal injustice to warrant us investigating.
8. Miss X says she complained twice to the Council about the recycling collections. On receipt of the second complaint the Council checked its records and could not find evidence of the first complaint. We do not investigate councils’ complaint‑handling processes 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

9. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because:
• there is not enough significant personal injustice caused by the recycling collection issues to warrant us investigating; and
• we do not investigate complaints about councils’ complaint-handling where we are not investigating the matters giving rise to the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman