Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that a council employee claimed to be a member of a professional body when they are not. This is because the issue did not cause Mr X significant injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains a council employee who responded to his complaint is not a member of the professional body they claimed membership of in information published online. Mr X says he took comfort in the belief the individual was a member of the body and is upset he was misled about this. He is also not happy with the Council’s handling of his complaint about the matter.

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The 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 not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

4. We do not investigate all the complaints we receive. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the alleged injustice to the person complaining. We only investigate the most serious complaints.
5. We have already considered Mr X’s complaint about the substantive issue which gave rise to his contact from the council employee concerned and we will not revisit that decision now.
6. While Mr X is unhappy the employee claimed to be a member of a professional body and that this misled him, the employee made no direct claims about membership to Mr X; Mr X found the reference to the professional body while carrying out a search on them online. For this reason, and because I cannot say the claim affected the issue Mr X has previously complained about, I do not consider the point has caused Mr X significant injustice warranting investigation.
7. Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with his complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the issue complained about did not cause Mr X significant injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman