Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s responses to his complaints about missed refuse collections resulting from strike action by its refuse collection crews. This is because the complaint is about an issue which affects all or most of the people in the Council’s area and the law does not allow us to investigate such matters.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains about the way the Council dealt with his concerns about missed refuse collections resulting from strike action by the Council’s refuse collection crews. He says the Council failed to respond to his correspondence, did not properly communicate with him and has charged him, through his council tax, for a service it did not provide.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully.
3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate. We cannot investigate something that affects all or most of the people in a council’s area. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(7), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. From time to time councils may be affected by industrial strike action by its employees or contractors. It is not for us to comment on the rights and wrongs of such action and we cannot say councils must give in to the demands of those who choose to strike.
6. While Mr X primarily complains about the way the Council dealt with his concerns, the injustice he claims stems from the missed collections which are the result of the employees’ strike action. The strike action, and the resulting missed refuse collections, affected all or most of the residents in the Council’s area and Mr X is affected by it in the same way as any other resident. He had to dispose of his rubbish himself and is frustrated that he paid for collections as part of his council tax which did not take place.

7. Because the issue affects all or most of the residents in the area the exclusion set out at Paragraph 3 applies; we cannot therefore investigate the complaint or the Council’s handling of it. This is because the courts have said that where we cannot investigate a complaint about the main or underlying issue, we cannot normally investigate related issues either. So, where the substance of a complaint is not subject to investigation, we do not investigate the Council’s handling of the issue in isolation. This is because there is little we could achieve by looking at the Council’s handling of a complaint about a matter which itself is not within our jurisdiction.

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Final decision

8. We cannot investigate this complaint. This is because it is about an issue which affects all or most of the people in the Council’s area.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman