Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council charging private landlords for taking part in a Council scheme to install central heating. This is because Mr X was not caused a significant enough injustice to warrant investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council is charging private landlords to take part in a Council scheme installing central heating. Mr X believes the charge is a disincentive.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We can decide whether to start or discontinue an investigation into a complaint within our jurisdiction. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 24A(6) and 34B(8), as amended)
3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
4. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about a Council’s complaint-handling, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mr X provided and discussed the complaint with him. I shared my draft decision with Mr X and considered his comments on it.

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What I found

6. A Council-run fuel poverty reduction scheme aimed to supply gas to an estate of houses and install gas central heating there. The Council owns some of the houses, others are privately owned. Mr X owns several houses on the estate, one of which he rents out. The Council will install central heating free of charge to social housing tenants and private owner-occupiers. However, the Council will charge landlords of privately rented houses £500 per house for installing central heating.
7. Mr X believes the Council is wrong to charge £500, which he says is a disincentive for private landlords to take part. As paragraph 3 explained, we will not necessarily investigate every allegation of fault. We must consider how the alleged fault has affected the person complaining.
8. When Mr X found out how much the charge was, he decided not to proceed. So he did not experience any significant financial injustice from the Council’s position. I appreciate Mr X might feel he lost some time dealing with the matter and was disappointed by the level of the charge. However, I do not consider those points amount to significant enough injustice to warrant the Ombudsman devoting time and public money to an investigation either.
9. Mr X told me he was concerned about the impact on his tenant and possibly other private tenants, who would not benefit from gas central heating if their landlords did not want to pay the £500 charge. However, we must consider the effect on the person who has complained to us. As explained above, I do not believe there is significant injustice to Mr X. Additionally, any injustice to private tenants would stem from their landlords’ unwillingness to pay the charge rather than stemming directly from the Council’s decision to charge landlords.

Mr X’s response to my draft decision

10. Commenting on a draft of this decision, Mr X argued:
1. He experienced stress and inconvenience because the Council stopped work on all properties he owned after he complained about the charge for landlords/. This included stopping work on a different property he and a co-owner rent out, where they had wanted central heating installed.
2. He believes the Council is at fault for not telling him about a different scheme that started in January 2020, which installs gas central heating at no charge to landlords. Mr X says had he known about this, he would not have paid the landlord charge for work to the property in paragraph a) above.
3. He also believes the Council is at fault for seemingly wrong bills another tenant received related to a gas meter that was installed under the Council’s scheme.
11. None of the above points shows a significant injustice on the specific complaint Mr X brought to the Ombudsman, which was about the Council’s policy of charging private landlords £500 to install central heating.
12. Point a) only relates to the complaint about charging landlords in the sense that Mr X reports the events in point a) happened because of his complaint about the charge. As paragraph 4 explained, we will normally only investigate a Council’s complaint-handling if we are also investigating the substantive matter that resulted in the complaint. Here, we are not investigating the substantive matter (the policy of charging landlords). So I consider it would be disproportionate to investigate how the Council reacted to the complaint.
13. Also, the law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint unless we are satisfied the council knows about the complaint and has had an opportunity to investigate and reply. Normally we expect complaints to complete the Council’s complaints procedure. Points a) and b) above arose after Mr X’s complaint about the charging policy completed the Council’s complaints procedure. Those points have not been through the Council’s complaints procedure. There has been some email correspondence between Mr X and the Council on both points. However, I do not consider that amounts to the Council being clearly aware of what Mr X thinks has gone wrong in relation to specific properties and the Council having an opportunity to respond comprehensively. If Mr X wants to complain about points a) and b), he should seek to take those points through the Council’s complaints procedure first.
14. On point c) above, Mr X raised the matter at stage one of his complaint to the Council about the charging policy. The Council requested more details of the property’s address and the problem so it could investigate. Mr X did not raise this matter further as a formal complaint; the stage 2 complaint correspondence did not refer to it. There were later emails about the matter, but I do not consider that satisfies the legal requirement I referred to in paragraph 13. Again, if Mr X wants to pursue this complaint, he should seek to use the Council’s complaints procedure, setting out what he believes the Council did wrong. If Mr X were subsequently to bring this complaint to the Ombudsman, it is likely we would want details of any injustice to Mr X, rather than to his tenant.
15. None of the points Mr X raised in reply to my draft decision is sufficient reason to investigate the main complaint he brought to Ombudsman, about the Council’s £500 charge for landlords, given the lack of significant injustice on that complaint. Nor are there other grounds for me to investigate any of those points currently, for the reasons I have given.

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Final decision

16. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is insufficient injustice to Mr X.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman