Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s allocation of a property to a third party and the loss of income he says the Council has suffered as a result. This is because the complaint is late and the issue did not cause Mr X significant personal injustice. The main injustice Mr X claims is a loss of income to the Council and this is an issue which indirectly affects ‘all or most’ of the people in the Council’s area. As such it is not subject to investigation.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, is a local councillor. He says the Council wrongly allocated a council property to a senior employee, depriving the public of income now and in the future. He also complains the Council failed to deal with his complaint about the matter for three years.

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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 cannot investigate something that affects all or most of the people in a council’s area. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(7), 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)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. Mr X alleges the Council wrongly allocated a property to an individual because of who they are. He says the Council has not achieved value for money for the taxpayer by renting the property at only a third of its true value. He is also concerned the individual may be eligible for the ‘right to buy’ scheme which allows council tenants to purchase their homes from the council at a substantial discount on its market value.
7. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We are not a regulatory body. We consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. Where we find fault causing significant injustice to the person who complained we may recommend a remedy.
8. But Mr X has no significant personal injustice from the issue he complains about. He is concerned the Council has lost income but this is not an issue which affects him or any other individual or group directly; the impact is on the public purse and, indirectly, ‘all or most’ of the people in the Council’s area. The complaint therefore falls outside our jurisdiction as set out at Paragraph 4.
9. Further, Mr X confirms he has complained about the issue for the last three years. It is therefore clear he became aware of the actions he complains about more than 12 months before his complaint to us. As such the complaint is late. While Mr X says the Council has failed to deal with his complaint over this period, if he wished to pursue the issue we would have expected him to come to us sooner.
10. We will not investigate the Council’s failure to respond to Mr X’s complaint as a standalone issue because the courts have said that where we cannot investigate a complaint about the main or underlying issue, we cannot normally investigate related issues either. So, where the substance of a complaint is not subject to investigation, we do not investigate the Council’s handling of the issue in isolation.

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Final decision

11. We cannot investigate this complaint. This is because the issue Mr X complains about affects ‘all or most’ of the people in the Council’s area and it is not therefore subject to investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman