Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint about the way the Council considered a petition against a fun fair, and the associated actions of two councillors. The alleged fault has not caused the complainant a significant personal injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Mr D, says two councillors breached the code of conduct at a Cabinet meeting where a petition, against a proposal to hold a fun fair in a local park, was being considered. In particular, Mr D says:
• The councillors failed to deal with representations or enquiries from residents, members of the community and visitors fairly, appropriately and impartially;
• The councillors failed to contribute to making the city council's decision-making processes as open and transparent as possible;
• One of the councillors failed to value colleagues and staff and engage with them in an appropriate manner and one that underpins the mutual respect that is essential to good government.
2. And with regard to the Council’s handling of the petition, Mr D also says:
• The delay in hearing the petition prevented proper consideration of the objections;
• Residents were led to believe that the decision on the fun fair application would be made at the Cabinet meeting, but a freedom of information request has since proved the decision had been made many months before.
3. Mr D says he has lost faith in the Council’s decision-making process, and its commitment to democracy, openness and transparency.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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 alleged fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• The type and extent of the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I have considered:
• Mr D’s complaint to the Ombudsman;
• The reports on the code of conduct complaints against the councillors, and the Council’s 23 August 2019 letter to Mr D;
• Mr D’s comments on a draft version of this statement.

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What I found

6. I appreciate Mr D is unhappy with the outcome of the petition against the fair, and that he has lost faith in the way the Council makes its decisions.
7. But I am also mindful that in Mr D’s complaint to the Ombudsman, he originally said he and the other residents involved had not suffered any loss, other than damage to their confidence in the Council’s democratic processes and the abilities and objectivity of the councillors involved. And in his response to my draft decision, Mr D accepts that the fun fair which gave rise to the complaint was a relatively minor matter.
8. With reference to paragraph 3 above, we will not normally investigate a complaint unless there is good reason to believe that the complainant has suffered a significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the Council.
9. On balance, in practical terms I am not persuaded that the extent of any tangible, personal injustice to Mr D is so significant as to warrant the Ombudsman pursuing the alleged faults further.

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Final decision

10. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr D’s complaint. This is because the personal injustice arising from the alleged fault is not so significant as to warrant us investigating the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman