Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about how the Council considered a conduct complaint. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault to justify our involvement.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about posts by Councillor A on social media. He said Councillor A’s posts contained lies and that Councillor A had lied to the officer investigating the complaint. He said the Council’s decision had caused significant distress.

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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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council’s process for considering councillor complaints, available on its website.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. The Council’s Monitoring Officer is responsible for considering complaints that an elected member has breached the Members’ Code of Conduct. Each council has different rules for dealing with complaints about code of conduct breaches.
6. The Ombudsman does not provide an appeal against the Monitoring Officer’s decisions. We are also unable to investigate or comment on actions of the councillor complained about. Where a decision has been made in line with the correct procedure, taking account of the relevant evidence, the Ombudsman will generally not criticise the decision, even if the complainant disagrees with it.
7. The Council’s Monitoring Officer was satisfied Councillor A was acting in their capacity as a local councillor when making the posts on social media as they were responding to an issue that arose in their local area and explaining the actions they had taken to address the issue.
8. The Council’s Monitoring Officer considered whether Councillor A’s actions could amount to a breach of the Code of Conduct. Their report explained how they considered each of the principles and concluded that, although the post complained about may have implied an inaccurate picture of Councillor A’s action, this may have been due to a reasonable misunderstanding of the legal position at the time. When doing so, they recorded how they considered the slightly different accounts provided by Mr X and councillor A. They concluded Councillor A’s actions did not amount to a potential breach of the Code of Conduct and therefore declined to investigate further.
9. The Council sent a copy of the Monitoring Officer’s report to Mr X and informed him he could complain to us if he was unhappy with the way it had handled his complaint.
10. The Monitoring Officer followed the Council’s procedure for considering Code of Conduct complaints and provided clear reasons for their decision in writing. There is insufficient evidence of fault to justify our involvement so we will not consider the complaint further.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault to justify our involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman