Surrey County Council (25 027 681)
Category : Other Categories > Councillor conduct and standards
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 27 Jul 2026
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate how the Council handled Mr X’s complaint about the maintenance of a cycle path. The original complaint is late and there is not enough outstanding injustice to warrant an investigation into the Council’s complaints handling.
The complaint
- Mr X complains senior officers and councillors at the Council failed to deal properly with concerns he raised about a cycle path.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
- 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 there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mr X’s complaint about the maintenance of a cycle path was made in November 2024 and is, therefore, late. Although I appreciate he was pursuing his complaint with the Council, this did not stop him from complaining to us within one year of becoming aware of the matter. I can see no good reason to exercise discretion on that and investigate now.
- It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue. This is because any injustice is normally not significant enough to warrant an investigation. This is the case here, and so we will not investigate.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. The original complaint is late and there is not enough outstanding injustice to warrant an investigation into the Council’s complaints handling.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman