Essex County Council (25 006 545)
Category : Other Categories > Commercial and contracts
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 18 Aug 2025
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to initiate legal proceedings. This is because we do not have jurisdiction to investigate complaints about the start of court action.
The complaint
- Ms X complains the Council has decided to initiate criminal and civil legal action against her company who had a contract with the Council. Ms X also complains about the Council’s complaint handling.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
- We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered the information provided by the complainant and I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Ms X is one of the directors of a company which had a contract with the Council.
- The Council have initiated legal proceedings against the company.
- Ms X complains the Council failed to justify its decision to start both criminal and civil proceedings against the company.
- We cannot investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to start court action. This is because we have no jurisdiction to investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court.
- Ms X also complaints the Council have allowed a conflict of interest by having a member of staff who was previously involved act as an investigator in the criminal matter. We cannot investigate this as it relates to closely to the start of court action and we do not have jurisdiction to investigate this element of the complaint.
- We will also not investigate how the Council dealt with Mr X’s complaint as it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint handling when we are not looking at the substantive issue.
Final decision
- We cannot investigate Ms X’s complaint because it falls outside our jurisdiction.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman