Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr B’s complaint about the way the Council has handled the situation with unused garages it owns. This is because Mr B has not suffered significant enough injustice to justify our involvement.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr B, complained about the way the Council has handled the situation with unused garages it owns. He says the Council is denying him an opportunity to rent and repair a garage.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
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:

• it is unlikely we would find fault, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I have considered the information Mr B provided and the Council’s responses to his complaint. I have given Mr B an opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

5. Mr B says the Council has failed to show clarity, transparency and commitment to resolve the problem of its unused garages. He complains the Council gave him conflicting information and failed to take his query seriously. When Mr B complained to us in November 2018 he said the Council owned hundreds of garages which people were using as rubbish dump. He told us the Council is either refusing to do something about the garages or let residents repair them and start using them.
6. Mr B complained to the Council in October 2018. He said he had made many applications to rent a garage, most recently in October 2018. In November 2018 the Council told Mr B its application process was on hold because it was carrying out an audit of its garages. It said it would update him on the progress of his application but it could not give him a timeframe for this.
7. Mr B complains that the Council failed to contact him with an update. He says, a year later, he found many garages to be still in the same state. He cannot understand why the Council is taking so long to do something. He wants the Council to take his complaint seriously and to make a decision soon to fix the issue.
8. Mr B contacted the Council in April and May 2019 because it had told him the audit process could take a couple of months but he had heard nothing. In May 2019 the Council told him there were about 800 people on its waiting list so it could not agree to sell or rent one of the unused garages he had identified. The Council said there would be a long waiting period when it started letting the garages so he may wish to consider alternative options.

9. Mr B did not contact us within 12 months of becoming aware of the unused garages issue. But, in this case, there is a good reason for us to consider his complaint because he believed the Council was taking action.
10. Our role is to consider complaints of injustice caused by fault by a council. We will not investigate a complaint if we consider a complainant has not suffered significant enough injustice to justify our involvement. Mr B has put time and effort into pursuing the issue of the unused garages and he has not had an opportunity to rent and repair one of them. But he has not suffered significant enough injustice over and above many other people who are affected while the matter remains unresolved.

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Final decision

11. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because Mr B has not suffered significant enough injustice to justify our involvement.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman