Summary: We will not investigate Mr X's complaint about the Council's handling of his complaint about alleged harassment at a library. This is because we could not add to the Council's investigation or achieve a worthwhile outcome.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council failed to properly investigate his concerns that a library employee mocked his accent and behaved in a threatening manner. He also complains the Council failed to process his request to escalate his complaint to Stage two for around five months.

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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 no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
3. We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))
4. We cannot decide if an organisation has breached the Equality Act as this can only be done by the courts. But we can make decisions about whether or not an organisation has properly taken account of an individual’s rights in its treatment of them.

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. Mr X complains the Council failed to properly investigate his concerns that a member of staff mocked his accent and behaved in a threatening manner. He also complains the Council failed to process his request to escalate his complaint to Stage two for around five months. He says this caused him distress and prevented him from returning to the library.
8. The Council has already accepted fault for failing to process Mr X's Stage two escalation request and provided a written apology. It accepted responsibility for the complaint handling failure and explained why the request was missed.
9. The Council later considered the substantive complaint at Stage two. It reviewed the complaint records and interviewed the officers involved before concluding there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations.
10. We will not investigate this complaint because I could not add to the Council's investigation or achieve a worthwhile outcome. There is conflicting evidence about what happened during the interactions complained about. We were not present and there is no independent evidence which would allow us to reach a robust view on the events. The Council considered the available evidence and interviewed the relevant officers before reaching its conclusions.
11. Mr X says the incidents amounted to racial harassment. However, the Ombudsman cannot decide whether discrimination or harassment occurred under the Equality Act. Such findings can only be made by the courts. While we can consider whether the Council properly considered Mr X's concerns, there is insufficient evidence available to allow us to reach a different substantive conclusion about the alleged incidents.
12. Even if we were to identify some fault in the way the Council considered the complaint, I am unlikely to achieve a meaningful additional outcome. In this case, the Council has already completed its complaints process and apologised for the complaint handling fault it identified. We do not normally investigate complaint handling where we are not investigating the substantive issues because there is not usually enough injustice to justify doing so.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mr X's complaint because we could not add to the Council's investigation or achieve a worthwhile outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman