Summary: Ms X complains the Council failed to properly deal with her complaint about its alleged failure to provide information she had requested from it. The Ombudsman will not investigate how the Council dealt with Ms X’s complaint, as a stand-alone issue, as Ms X is not caused a significant injustice from this.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Ms X, complains the Council failed to properly deal with her complaint about its alleged failure to provide information she had requested from it. Ms X also complains that the Council is now treating her as a vexatious complainant.

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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 it is unlikely we would find fault, or the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
3. 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.
4. The Information Commissioner's Office considers complaints about freedom of information. Its decision notices may be appealed to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). So where we receive complaints about freedom of information, we normally consider it reasonable to expect the person to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.

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How I considered this complaint

5. I have considered what Ms X said in her complaint and her comments in response to my draft decision.

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What I found

6. Ms X complained to the Council about how it had dealt with her request for information. Ms X says the Council failed to deal with her complaint in accordance with its complaints procedure and so Ms X made a further complaint about this.
7. Ms X also complains the Council has now deemed her contact about the complaint to be unreasonable. For a period of six months, it has decided to restrict Ms X’s access to officers relating to this matter and has advised Ms X it may not respond to further contact. It has also said that if Ms X continues to make contact, it may seek legal advice about restricting her access further.

Analysis

8. Ms X’s complaint arises from her request for information to the Council. While Ms X does not complain to us about how the Council dealt with this request, this is a matter we generally would not investigate as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the body best placed to do so.
9. As we would not deal with the matter at the heart of Ms X’s complaint, we will not investigate how the Council dealt with a complaint about it or a complaint about it failing to follow its own complaint procedure. This is because there is insufficient evidence caused to Ms X from this as a stand-alone matter.
10. The Council is entitled to take the action it has in terms of restricting Ms X’s access and currently I can see no indication of fault in respect of this. Additionally, while I appreciate Ms X is upset at the Council’s actions, this again relates back to her being dissatisfied with the Council’s response to her requests for information. Ms X can address this by complaining to the ICO.

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Final decision

11. My decision is that the Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint as Ms X is not caused significant injustice from it to warrant our involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman