Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about how the Council handled his application for an allotment. This is because there is not enough evidence the Council’s actions have caused Mr X a significant personal injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, complains about how the Council handled his application for an allotment

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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 fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered Mr X’s complaint to the Ombudsman and the information he provided. I also gave Mr X the opportunity to comment on a draft statement before reaching a final decision on his complaint.

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What I found

4. In November 2020, Mr X applied to the Council for an allotment. The Council said it was not accepting applications because there were more than 100 people on the waiting list. Mr X submitted a freedom of information request and discovered there were only 60 people on the list. Mr X complained to the Council. In its responses to Mr X the Council said:
• Its policy states the waiting list for allotments will close when it reaches 200 names. It will not be reopened until it has 100 names. But the policy does not say the Council will reopen the waiting list straight away. It would, however, have been sensible to include a line to this effect in the policy.
• The Council had received hundreds of requests from residents wanting to be added to the waiting list. It was not manageable or sensible to keep adding people to the list every time it received an enquiry.
• Mr X was unhappy the Council did not take into account if a person had a disability when considering applications for an allotment. But this was not part of the Council’s policy. If it was, due to the small number of allotments in the Council’s area, it was unlikely those without disabilities would ever be offered an allotment.
• The waiting list had now reopened. Mr X had been added at position 81.
5. I understand Mr X is frustrated by his experience of trying to join the Council’s waiting list for an allotment. Having viewed the Council’s allotment policy, I agree with Mr X’s concerns about its wording. If the Council’s intention is that it will reopen the waiting list as soon as possible after numbers drop to 100 names or less, but not necessarily straight away, then this is what the policy should say. I hope the Council will amend its policy to clarify how it operates the waiting list.
6. But in deciding whether to investigate a complaint we need to consider the injustice to the person complaining. We need to consider if the Council’s actions have had an impact on the complainant. I do not consider that to be the case here and I have set out the reasons below:
• When Mr X applied for an allotment in November 2020, there were only around 60 people on the list. The waiting list must therefore have reached 100 names before Mr X applied for an allotment.
• When the Council opened its allotment wating list in early 2021, it immediately filled to 200 names.
• If the Council had reopened the list as soon as it dropped to 100 names, the same thing would have happened. There would have been 200 names on the list.
• This number may have reduced by the time Mr X applied for an allotment in November 2020. But it is unlikely to have reduced enough for the Council to reopen the list. Mr X would not therefore have been able to join the waiting list.
• But because the Council did not reopen the waiting list until after Mr X applied, he has been able to join the waiting list - at position 81. For the reasons set out above, this could not have happened if the Council had strictly followed its own published policy.
7. The Council’s actions cannot therefore be said to have caused Mr X any injustice. We will not therefore investigate.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. This is because there is not enough evidence the Council’s actions have caused Mr X a significant personal injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman