Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint the Council failed to update him when a named point of contact changed. The Council has already apologised to Mr X for its oversight, and we could achieve nothing more by investigating further.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains he did not receive an email from the Council informing him of a change to a single point of contact for reporting any issues he had regarding an abandoned industrial estate. Mr X says he was misled by the Council and no email was sent. Mr X wants the Council to explain why it could not access a copy of the email from a former employee’s email account or admit it was not sent.

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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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement and we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation. (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 Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

4. The Council has explained to Mr X that it sent out emails notifying a group Mr X is a part of, of a change in the named point of contact. The Council however cannot be certain Mr X was included as it cannot access the former employee’s emails to confirm this. The Council has apologised to Mr X and advised it will take steps to make sure this does not happen again. The Council’s complaint response to Mr X confirmed the contact details for the new named point of contact.
5. Our role is to consider complaints where the person bringing the complaint has suffered significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the organisation. This means we will normally only investigate a complaint where the complainant has suffered a serious loss, harm or distress as a direct result of faults or failures. We will not normally investigate a complaint where the alleged loss or injustice is not a serious or significant matter. We will not investigate this complaint because we are unlikely to achieve anything further and the injustice caused to Mr X is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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Final decision

6. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because this matter has not caused significant enough personal injustice to warrant us investigating. We also could not achieve anything more than the Council’s previous complaint investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman