East Devon District Council (19 008 161)
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: Mr B complains that the Council has not properly providing building control oversight on his development. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr B’s complaint further, because the Council has withdrawn its requirement for disputed works and Mr B has not suffered sufficient injustice to warrant investigation by the Ombudsman.
The complaint
- The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mr B, complains the Council did not provide proper building control oversight at a development at his home properly. He complains the Council:
- required him to carry our unnecessary works.
- threatened him by saying it could have taken enforcement action.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:
- the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
- the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
- we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
- We can decide whether to start or discontinue an investigation into a complaint within our jurisdiction. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 24A(6) and 34B(8), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I spoke to Mr B and considered the details of his complaint. I reviewed documents sent by Mr B and the Council.
- I gave the Council and Mr B the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.
What I found
- Mr B intended to carry out a development at his home. The Council carried out a pre-application visit to his home in July 2018.
- The Council visited Mr B again in November 2018 to inspect any work carried out at that time. The Council asked Mr B to complete some work. Mr B’s builders disagreed that the work was necessary but it was completed.
- For insurance purposes in 2019, Mr B asked the Council to confirm that work to date had been completed according to Building Regulations. The Council then made another site visit to Mr B’s property to inspect it.
- The Council asked Mr B to undertake another five items of work. Mr B again disagreed with the Council that some of the works were necessary and engaged a structural engineer to provide an expert opinion.
- After considering the structural engineer’s opinion and holding a meeting with Mr B, the Council decided that four of the five requested items of work were not necessary.
- As part of the ongoing communication, the Council told Mr B that at the first pre-application visit it had identified potential enforcement issues but had chosen not to take any action. Mr B says this is the main issue in his complaint and wants the case officer to be replaced by someone else.
- Mr B complained to the Council after agreement had been reached about the works that were necessary. The Council did not uphold Mr B’s complaint but said the case officer will be accompanied at any future visits.
Final decision
- The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr B’s complaint further because there is insufficient personal injustice to Mr B as agreement has been reached about which works are necessary and the Council is not proposing to take any enforcement action against him. It is also unlikely that the Ombudsman could achieve the outcome that Mr B wants. I have now discontinued my investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman