Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about the Council's response to her complaint about a councillor’s conduct and a failure to meet her reasonable adjustments during its complaint handling. There is insufficient evidence of fault and any injustice is not significant enough to warrant our involvement.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council mishandled her complaint about a councillor’s conduct. She says the Monitoring Officer mischaracterised her complaint, failed to consider relevant evidence and misapplied the Code of Conduct complaint assessment tests. She also says it failed to meet her request for reasonable adjustments during the complaints process.

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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 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 the complainant.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Councils have a duty to designate a Monitoring Officer to ensure the lawfulness and fairness of authority decision making. The Monitoring Officer must ensure that the council, its officers and members maintain the highest standards of conduct. Each council has different rules for dealing with complaints about code of conduct breaches.
6. The Ombudsman does not provide an appeal against the Monitoring Officer’s decisions. We are also unable to investigate or comment on the actions of the councillor complained about. Where a decision has been made in line with the correct procedure, taking account of the relevant evidence, the Ombudsman will generally not criticise the decision, even if the complainant does not agree with it.
7. In this case, I am satisfied the Monitoring Officer appropriately considered Ms X’s complaint before deciding not to take further action. Although the response may not have been in the level of detail that Ms X wanted, the Monitoring Officer appropriately considered Ms X’s concerns, referred to the submitted evidence in the response and explained why they did not consider the complaint should be investigated.
8. I understand Ms X disagrees with the Monitoring Officer’s decision. But the Monitoring Officer was entitled to use their professional judgement to decide the complaint should not be formally investigated. As the Monitoring Officer properly considered Ms X’s concerns, it is unlikely an investigation would find fault.
9. We will also not investigate the Council’s complaints handling and whether it met her requests for reasonable adjustments. The complaint correspondence shows that Ms X was able to submit her complaint and supporting evidence and actively engage in the complaints process. Even if the Council did not consider or consistently meet her adjustment requests, Ms X was able to participate in the process and express her views, which were considered as part of the process. Any injustice caused is not significant enough to warrant our involvement.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to warrant an investigation and any injustice caused by the Council’s complaints handling is not enough to justify our involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman