Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council breaching the Equality Act during the validation process for the complainant’s planning application. There is insufficient evidence of fault causing the complainant a significant injustice.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains the Council failed to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act by refusing to accommodate her disability during the planning application validation process. In particular, Mrs X says the Council’s process was rigid, unlawful, and it insisted on unnecessary documentation. This caused avoidable delays in implementing essential home adaptations, distress, inconvenience, and significant emotional and financial harm.
2. In addition, Mrs X says the Council’s complaint process was inadequate, as it failed to engage meaningfully with her concerns.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We can 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. So, we do not start an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

4. And it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered:
• information provided by Mrs X and the Council, which included their complaint correspondence.
• information about Mrs X’s planning application, as available on the Council’s website
• the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. We cannot decide if an organisation has breached the Equality Act as this can only be done by the courts. But we can make decisions about whether or not an organisation has properly taken account of an individual’s rights in its treatment of them.
7. Organisations will often be able to show they have properly taken account of the Equality Act if they have considered the impact their decisions will have on the individuals affected and these decisions can be challenged, reviewed or appealed.
8. In this case, the Council considered Mrs X’s concerns about the information/plans it initially requested from its local validation checklist, and accepted alternative documents instead. As such, I consider there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council to justify starting an investigation.
9. In addition, it took only nine days to validate the application, and I do not see that Mrs X was put to more cost than any other applicant would have been during the validation process. So, there is also insufficient injustice arising from the alleged fault to warrant pursuing the matter.
10. Finally, it would not be a good use of our resources to solely investigate the alleged fault in the Council’s complaint process, where we are not pursuing the substantive complaint about the Council’s validation requirements.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault causing her a significant injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman