Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s response to Ms X’s report of a leak in her roof. This is because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council sufficient to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to as Ms X, says the Council has not taken seriously her report of a leak in her roof which had been replaced by Council contractors several years ago.

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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 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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Ms X and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Some years ago Council contractors completed work to replace Ms X’s roof which had been paid for under a loan arrangement with the Council.
7. In 2020 Ms X says she contacted the officer who had overseen the work about a leak in the roof. She says she did not hear anything further and followed matters up in 2021 when two visits were undertaken to her property by Council officers. At neither visit was evidence of a leak found. Following the involvement of her MP in 2022, two further visits took place with the same result.
8. Ms X’s concerns about a roof leak have been investigated by the Council but no evidence of a leak has been found apart from an historical stain to the landing ceiling. Had the roof been leaking since early 2020, when Ms X’s says she was informed of the leak by a plumber, one might reasonably expect the leak and any staining to have been more noticeable three years on but this does to appear to be the case.
9. We will not investigate what happened when Ms X says she reported the matter in 2020 without a response from the Council because this matter falls outside our jurisdiction due to the passage of time. Ms X could reasonably have complained about this in 2020. With regards to the action taken by the Council since 2021, it has investigated her concerns but found no evidence of a leak.
10. There is no evidence to suggest Ms X was not taken seriously. The Council has investigated but found no leak and as there is no evidence of fault by the Council, we will not investigate the complaint.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council sufficient to warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman