Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council (25 000 305)
Category : Environment and regulation > Refuse and recycling
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 01 Jul 2025
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about missed waste collections. The Council is now regularly collecting his waste. An investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
The complaint
- Mr X complains about missed waste collections since July 2024. He says the Council has failed to properly investigate the issue and provided inaccurate information about the reasons for missed collections.
- He wants the Council to meet with him and resolve the issue so that his waste is collected regularly.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- In its complaint response, the Council accepted it had missed some of Mr X’s waste collections there had been some inaccuracies in the crew’s reporting of the reasons for the missed collections. It apologised to him for this unclear information. It said it had now worked to resolve the issue and moving forward, would collect his waste in line with the schedule.
- Since bringing his complaint to us, Mr X has confirmed the Council is now regularly collecting his waste.
- We will not investigate this complaint. The Council is now collecting his waste and so it is unlikely an investigation would lead to a different outcome or achieve anything more.
- I acknowledge Mr X remains unhappy about how the Council handled his complaint. However, we will not investigate this as it is not a good use of our resources to investigate complaints handling, where we decide not to investigate the substantive issue.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because an investigation would not lead to a different outcome or achieve anything more.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman