Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council (18 017 197)
Category : Other Categories > Councillor conduct and standards
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 07 May 2019
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that the Council has refused to tell him whether a record of a councillor’s interests was true and correct on a particular date. This is because the injustice to Mr X from his complaint is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
The complaint
- The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, complains the Council has refused to tell him whether a record of a councillor’s interests was true and correct on a particular date.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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)
How I considered this complaint
- I have considered what Mr X said in his complaint and his comments made in response to my draft decision.
What I found
- Mr X complains the Council has refused to tell him whether a record of a councillor’s interests was true and correct on a particular date.
- Mr X says the Council has not dealt with his question about this in an expeditious manner and when a response was received, it did not answer his question.
- Mr X says it is reasonable that all council tax payers should be able to have confidence that any material which appears on the Council’s website is factually correct.
Analysis
- While I understand Mr X’s view that he should be entitled to be reassured about the accuracy of information on the Council’s website is correct, the injustice caused to Mr X, from our perspective, is not sufficient to justify our involvement in this matter. We will not therefore investigate.
Final decision
- We will not investigate as the injustice to Mr X from his complaint is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman