London Borough of Newham (25 014 969)
Category : Environment and regulation > Refuse and recycling
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 06 Apr 2026
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about household waste collection and complaint handling. This is because there is not enough injustice to justify our involvement.
The complaint
- Mr B says the Council has failed to properly respond to his complaints about missed bin collections. Mr B feels he has wasted hours of time chasing the Council. Mr B wants the Council to respond to his concerns.
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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
(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
- We do not investigate all complaints we receive. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the alleged injustice to the person complaining. We only investigate the most serious complaints. I appreciate it is frustrating for Mr B not having his household waste regularly collected. It is difficult for Mr B to report missed collections because of the short time frame and his working hours. So, he has spent time raising complaints to the Council. However, this is not enough to justify our involvement.
- Mr B is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with his 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.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr B’s complaint because there is not enough injustice to justify our involvement. The Council may wish to consider monitoring Mr B’s household waste collection for a period, and considering if there are alternative ways for him to report missed collections.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman