Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that the Council labelled him a persistent complainant. There is not enough evidence of fault to justify an investigation. We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint that the Council prevented scrutiny of issues related to a community facility. That is because these matters have been considered by the High Court.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council:
• failed to properly handle his complaints;
• wrongly deemed him to be a prolific and persistent complainant to prevent the matters he complained about being properly investigated; and
• silenced scrutiny of the same matters, again to prevent them from being properly investigated.
2. Mr X says that as a result, he has incurred £104,000 in court fees in an attempt to stop the public from being misled.
3. He wants a public apology and for the Council to refund his legal fees.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
5. 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 injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

6. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered information provided by the complainant.
8. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

9. Previously, Mr X took the Council to the High Court over matters relating to a community facility. He was unsuccessful and incurred significant legal costs.
10. Following the court case, the Council wrote to Mr X to say the number of emails he had sent, and continued to send, was excessive. It appointed a single point of contact to deal with him and said it would only accept correspondence about new matters.
11. Mr X complained to us.
12. We will not investigate these complaints. There was no evidence of fault in how the Council made its decision to limit Mr X’s communication with it. Therefore, we cannot criticise the decision itself.
13. Matters relating to the community facility and any actions taken by the Council in regard to further challenge by Mr X are outside our jurisdiction. This is because they have been decided by the courts and we have no power to intervene. The fact Mr X links his alleged injustice to the court costs he incurred, evidences these issues are closely connected to what happened in court.
14. We will not investigate the Council’s handling of Mr X’s complaints in isolation. Any injustice would not be significant enough to warrant our involvement.

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Final decision

15. We will not investigate some of Mr X’s complaints because there is not enough evidence of fault to justify an investigation. We cannot investigate the other complaints because they have been subject to court action.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman