Summary: Mr X complains the Council has unreasonably restricted his contact with it about highways issues he identifies and reports. He is also unhappy his local district council provides a higher level of service than the Council when it comes to removing graffiti. The Ombudsman found is no evidence of fault by the Council. The evidence supports its grounds for imposing contact restrictions, and so it is a matter of professional judgement whether it should. Mr X’s desire to see a better general response from the Council to reports of graffiti is not something the Ombudsman can achieve.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council has unreasonably restricted his contact with it about highways issues he identifies and reports. He is also unhappy his local district council provides a higher level of service than the Council when it comes to removing graffiti. Mr X also complains an officer misused his personal information to harass him.

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What I have investigated

2. I am able to investigate Mr X’s concerns about the contact restrictions the Council has imposed and its policy on dealing with graffiti. This means I am not investigating Mr X’s complaint about an officer misusing his personal information. I will explain why at the end of this statement.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. 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)
5. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
6. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I spoke with Mr X, discussed his complaint and read the information he sent to the Ombudsman. I also wrote to the Council to make enquiries to assist my investigation. I have reviewed the material it sent in response.
8. I have seen the Council’s ‘Unreasonable or Unreasonably Persistent Complainants Policy’.
9. I have considered the government’s advisory standards on graffiti removal, found in the ‘DEFRA Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse’. As these are advisory standards rather than the law or formal guidance, local authorities do not have to follow them.
10. I shared a copy of my draft decision with Mr X and the Council and I invited them to comment on it.

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What I found

Contact Restrictions

11. The Council has enforced contact restrictions against Mr X since at least 2015. These relate specifically to him making reports about highways defects and do not affect contact with other service areas. The Council says Mr X can still log highways reports but it will not enter correspondence with him about them. It says if a report gives enough detail and reaches the threshold it will still deal with it.
12. The Council renewed Mr X’s contact restrictions by letter in November 2018. In the past, the Council had committed to updating Mr X every six months about the result of his complaints. However, it removed this measure in October 2017. It explained at the time Mr X was making too many reports and it could not justify the time and cost in collating the six-monthly reports.
13. A further review in November 2018 kept the same contact restrictions in place. The letter justified this on the basis Mr X had made 70 reports in the previous 12 months. It found 22 did not require any action.
14. Mr X disagrees with the Council’s decision to impose contact restrictions. He says he does not expect a ‘gold-plated service’ but takes an interest in his local area and reports the problems he sees. Mr X believes the Council has painted a bad picture of him. He thinks it uses the fact he chases an update when problems have not been fixed a few months later as an excuse to say he is ‘bombarding’ officers.
15. I have considered the Council’s policy on unreasonable complainants. This is an area within each local authority’s discretion. The Ombudsman would expect the general principles of natural justice to be upheld. There should be clear definitions explaining what is and is not unreasonable contact. Officers should ensure they clearly communicate decisions and the reasons for them. And there should be reviews annually or sooner if there are reasons to do so. I am satisfied the Council’s policy meets those standards. In Mr X’s case, the restrictions are in place for a specific reason and limited to reports of that type. He can still contact the Council for other reasons.
16. The Council took the decision to stop the six-monthly updates in October 2017. Mr X complained to the Ombudsman in February 2019 and a further review had taken place in the meantime. I consider the decision to remove the updates happened too long ago for me to investigate now.
17. I have checked the data behind the Council’s decision to renew the contact restrictions in November 2018. There were 69 reports rather than 70. The Council noted but cannot explain this inconsistency. However, I do not consider it has a significant effect on my view of matters.
18. I looked into Mr X’s concern the Council could use repeat reports several months apart to justify renewing the restrictions. This is a legitimate concern to have. It is something the Council should guard against, as its decision not to update Mr X about his reports means sometimes he will not understand why it has not taken action. However, the data I have seen does not support a conclusion that this was a significant factor this time.
19. Very few of the 69 reports appear to be genuine duplicates. Examples include where Mr X made one pair of reports on the same day or a follow-up from Mr X made only 15 days rather than months later. I am therefore satisfied the Council is not inappropriately counting repeat reports against Mr X in deciding to maintain his contact restrictions.
20. Overall, the decision to maintain the contact restrictions for Mr X after a review in November 2018 was a professional judgement matter for the Council. The Ombudsman is not an appeals body and with no fault in the Council’s decision-making process we cannot intervene in its decision. I understand Mr X disagrees with the Council’s stance but that alone is not grounds for me to find fault.

Graffiti

21. Mr X also complains about how the Council handles his reports of graffiti. He says he takes exception to graffiti and considers it all to be offensive. However, he says the service offered by the Council compares unfavourably with that given by his local district council. He says that authority deals with his reports much more efficiently.
22. Mr X has written to his MP about the Council’s response to reports of graffiti. He has shared some of the correspondence between him, his MP’s office and the Council. In this, the Council says it policy is to only clean graffiti immediately if it is offensive. It will also clean graffiti on its own property and structures. Otherwise, it says it passes reports to the relevant local district council to deal with instead. Mr X says he doubts the Council passes reports to the other local authorities as it claims.
23. More recently, in March 2019, Mr X says the Council attempted to remove graffiti from a lamppost which he reported several years ago. However, he says the Council only did the work after he approached the local Police Community Support Officer, who in turn reported the matter to the Council. Mr X thinks it is unfair reports from others seem to have a much higher priority.
24. The government has chosen to only publish ‘advisory standards’ on this topic and they carry limited weight. The standards suggest local authorities should prioritise reports of racist or offensive graffiti. The Council says it does that. The standards also suggest how local authorities can grade graffiti for recording purposes based on its size, visibility and public reaction.
25. It is not for the Ombudsman to set priorities or direct resources for the Council. If it fulfils its legal duties and other responsibilities it is free to decide how it will deal with competing demands in different service areas. In this case, the Council has explained its policy on responding to reports of graffiti from members of the public.
26. I have to consider how this has affected Mr X directly. Only 1 of Mr X’s 69 reports in 2017-18 was about graffiti. That report indicates the Council resolved it itself rather than passing it on. On that basis I cannot say the Council is failing to pass incidents on to the district councils.
27. I have concluded there is no evidence of fault by the Council here. The Council does not have to act in a specific way when members of the public report graffiti. Mr X would like it to provide a higher level of service, closer to that he says his local district council provides. However, although Mr X is entitled to hold that view, in the absence of fault this is not something the Ombudsman can achieve for him.

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Final decision

28. There is no evidence of fault in the Council’s decision to impose contact restrictions on Mr X or in its policy on removing graffiti.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

29. I am unable to investigation Mr X’s allegation an officer misused personal information to harass him.
30. This is because the Ombudsman already considered Mr X’s complaint about this 2017. We advised him he should address his complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office instead. It has responsibility for investigating breaches of data protection laws.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman