Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s failure to comply with its procurement processes and the Public Contract Regulations 2015. If Mr X felt the Council’s decision to reject his bid was wrong it would have been reasonable for him to challenge it at court. The Council has provided a suitable remedy for the injustice caused by its failures in dealing with Mr X’s complaint.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council failed to follow the Public Contract Regulations 2015 and its own constitution in rejecting his bid for a services contract. He says his bid was rejected unfairly and this caused considerable financial inconvenience.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions a council has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)
3. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. The Council rejected Mr X’s bid in December 2020. Mr X therefore had until January 2021 to challenge its decision under the Public Contract Regulations 2015 at the High Court. But Mr X says he is complaining about the process and not looking to appeal against the decision, so he did not pursue the legal remedy available to him.
6. However, we could not say the Council’s rejection of Mr X’s bid caused any significant injustice unless we could say its decision to award the contract to a third party, rather than to Mr X, was wrong. But as Mr X has not sought to challenge the decision the High Court has not made any ruling on the Council’s award of the contract to a third party. We could not therefore say Mr X wrongly missed out as a result of the fault he alleges.
7. While Mr X believes the decision should be quashed and the process re-run this is not an outcome we could achieve. The Council has entered into an agreement with the successful party and if Mr X had wished to challenge this it would have been reasonable for him to do so at court at the time.
8. The Council accepts it did not deal properly with Mr X’s complaint at Stage 2 of its complaints procedure and has apologised for this and offered Mr X £250 for his time and trouble. This provides a suitable remedy for the matter and it is unlikely further investigation would achieve anything more for him.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because we could not say the decision to award the contract to a third party, rather than to Mr X, was wrong. We could not therefore say the Council’s actions caused him significant injustice beyond that which the Council has already remedied. Had Mr X wished to challenge the Council’s decision it would have been reasonable for him to go to court.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman