Summary: We have discontinued our investigation of this complaint, about the Council not making a compulsory purchase of a community asset. This is because it is reasonable to expect the complainant to have approached us sooner.

The complaint

1. I will refer to the complainant as Mr F. Mr F represents a community group in his complaint.
2. Mr F complains the Council has not used its compulsory purchase power to acquire a derelict community asset, despite making a formal decision to this effect. The Council’s intention was to then sell the asset to the community group, to allow the group to bring the asset back into use; but Mr F says, because the Council has not done so, this means the group has now lost funding it had successfully applied for.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered evidence provided by Mr F and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
5. I also shared a draft copy of this decision with each party for their comments.

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What I found

6. Mr F represents a community group, set up specifically with the purpose of acquiring and renovating a derelict asset.
7. After the group’s attempts to directly purchase the asset from the current owner failed, the Council agreed in 2018 to make a compulsory purchase order (CPO) to acquire the asset. The purpose of this was for the group to then purchase to asset in turn from the Council, using funding it had received from a government scheme.
8. In September 2023 Mr F approached the Ombudsman to complain the Council had not followed through on its decision to purchase the asset. At that point the Council had not investigated his complaint under its own procedures, and so we referred the matter back to the Council for investigation.
9. Having completed the Council’s complaint process in November 2023, Mr F made a similar, separate complaint to the Ombudsman in November 2024.

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Analysis

10. The law says a person should approach us within 12 months of becoming aware of the issue they wish to complain about. This is called the ‘permitted period’.
11. Mr F’s complaint is, in essence, that he is dissatisfied the Council has failed to do something. It is therefore not straightforward to define exactly when he ‘became aware’ of this. However, the Council made its decision to seek the CPO more than six years before Mr F made his complaint to the Ombudsman. I do not consider he could reasonably be said to have only become aware in the previous 12 months of his dissatisfaction the Council had not seen this decision through.
12. I also note, that despite receiving the Council’s final response to his complaint in November 2023, Mr F did not return to us until marginally over a year later in November 2024. Even taking the Council’s final response as the starting point for his complaint therefore (which I do not), his complaint is still late.
13. The law gives us flexibility to disapply this restriction where appropriate. However, we must first be satisfied it was not reasonable to expect a person to approach us sooner. I see nothing in the information available to me to suggest this is the case. I am particularly conscious Mr F, in his role representing the community group, has been in frequent and detailed contact with the Council since it decided to seek a CPO. I have therefore decided not to exercise discretion in this instance.

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Decision

14. I have discontinued my investigation.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman