Norfolk County Council (24 015 192)
Category : Other Categories > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 13 Dec 2024
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint that the Council has failed to properly oversee the actions of a company it owns, causing financial loss which indirectly impacts residents and council taxpayers. This is because the law does not allow us to investigate complaints about matters which affect ‘all or most’ of the people in a council’s area.
The complaint
- The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council has failed to properly monitor and scrutinise the financial conduct of a company it owns, resulting in significant losses to the public purse.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’.
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
- 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)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- The purpose of the Ombudsman is to investigate complaints and remedy any resulting injustice caused to individual members of the public. We have no jurisdiction to investigate complaints about matters where the claimed impact is not to any particular individual but to the public purse and therefore, indirectly, all council taxpayers.
- Mr X’s complaint concerns financial losses suffered by the Council-owned company but this is an issue which affects ‘all or most’ of the people in the Council’s area. It is therefore caught by the exclusion set out at Paragraph 4.
Final decision
- We cannot investigate this complaint. This is because it is about a matter which affects ‘all or most’ of the people in the Council’s area.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman