Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the way the Council considered a complaint about the conduct of a councillor. We do not consider the complainant has suffered a significant personal injustice to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains about the way the Council dealt with her complaint about a councillor. She wants the Council to investigate her complaint and clarify it procedures on its website.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide:

• any 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, section 34(B))

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Ms X and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

Back to top

My assessment

5. Ms X complains the Council delayed in dealing with her complaint about a councillor. She says it insisted she used a form when this is not stated as a mandatory requirement of the process.
6. In response to my enquiries the Council states it did not delay in dealing with the complaint. It confirms Ms X has a specific email address to write to as there is a single point of contact at the Council who manages her correspondence. However, Ms X did not use the prescribed email address when making her initial complaint. Once the single point of contact received Ms X’s complaint, it was forwarded to the Monitoring Officer (MO) for consideration.
7. The MO asked Ms X to clarify which part of the code of conduct she believed the councillor had broken. The Council says once it received the necessary information from Ms X on the form provided for submitting such complaints it began to process her complaint.
8. The Council’s arrangements for dealing with complaints about councillors says the MO will normally issue a decision on whether to investigate the complaint within 14 days. In this case it took 25 working days for the Council to confirm it would not investigate her complaint. I understand Ms X may be disappointed with the time taken to deal with this matter, however I do not consider this caused her a significant personal injustice.
9. I acknowledge Ms X wants the Council to investigate her complaint, however this is not something the Ombudsman can achieve.

Back to top

Final decision

10. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because we do not consider that she has suffered a significant personal injustice. Also, we cannot require the Council to investigate her complaint against the councillor, therefore we cannot achieve the main outcome she is seeking.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman