Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr B’s complaint about the Council’s involvement in the roll-out of superfast broadband. The Ombudsman could not say the injustice Mr B claims is due to fault by the Council.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr B, complains the Council failed to attend meetings of a local partnership for the roll-out of superfast broadband. Mr B complains his postcode area has inadequate broadband provision as the speed is too slow to enable working from home or streaming online content. He believes the Council should have done more to ensure his postcode area was included in the roll-out programme and should compensate those households who have slow broadband speeds.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. 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, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information Mr B provided and the complaint correspondence between Mr B and the Council. I sent a draft decision to Mr B and considered the comments he made in reply before I made my final decision.

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What I found

5. Mr B has explained the Council was part of a superfast broadband roll-out programme and contributed £50,000 towards the formation of a broadband partnership board. The partnership aims to ‘deliver next generation broadband infrastructure to areas where the market has failed to invest’
6. Mr B lives in a rural area and his postcode has fewer than 20 houses. While part of the postcode can now receive superfast broadband, there are currently no plans to include the rest of the postcode in the roll-out of this next generation broadband infrastructure. Mr B has explained his current broadband speed is incapable of supporting home working and streaming and is likely to affect house prices. Mr B says Council officers failed to attend partnership meetings, had no records or files to hand over and this has led to the current situation.
7. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint because it is too speculative to say the injustice Mr B claims of slow broadband, is due to fault by the Council. The Ombudsman could not say that if the Council had attended meetings, Mr B’s property would have been included in the roll-out of new broadband infrastructure.

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Final decision

8. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Ombudsman could not say the injustice Mr B claims is due to fault by the Council.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman