North Devon District Council (25 012 850)
Category : Other Categories > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 08 Oct 2025
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint about the Council’s use of public money to set up a pest control business as it is not within our legal remit.
The complaint
- Mr X complains the Council’s decision to set up a pest control business, which is a non-statutory service, is not a good use of public funds and may impact on his own business.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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)
- 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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- We cannot investigate this complaint as Council spending impacts all or most of the people in the Council area. The complaint is not therefore within our legal remit, as per paragraph three.
- We investigate complaints of personal injustice and while Mr X has concerns about what might happen in the future, he confirms he is not personally impacted by the Council’s decision at this time. There is insufficient evidence of a personal injustice therefore to Mr X to warrant our involvement.
Final decision
- We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint because we cannot investigate public spending and there is no significant injustice caused to Mr X.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman