Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint that the Council failed to ensure safety measures are properly installed around roadwork sites, and that it lied during the subsequent complaint process. This is because the alleged faults by the Council have not caused the complainant to suffer a significant personal injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Mr B, says the Council’s highway contractors failed to connect and secure barriers/signs around excavation sites, and the Council lied in its subsequent complaint responses about the safety measures adopted by the contractors to ensure/check the sites were safe.
2. Mr B says as a road user – pedestrian, cyclist and driver – he has been subject to danger and inconvenience as a result of the unprotected excavations. And he says that being lied to in writing by a public authority constitutes a significant injustice.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. Where an individual, organisation or private company is providing services on behalf of a council, we can investigate complaints about the actions of these providers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 25(7), as amended)
4. 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

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

5. 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

6. I have considered:
• Mr B’s complaint to the Ombudsman;
• The complaint correspondence between Mr B and the Council, including the photographs submitted by Mr B;
• Mr B’s comments on a draft version of this statement.

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What I found

7. I appreciate Mr B is concerned about the safety of the roadwork sites in the Council’s area. But from the information I have seen so far, I am not persuaded that the alleged failure to properly secure the sites has caused Mr B to suffer a significant personal injustice, like damage to property or person.
8. With reference to paragraph 3 above, I therefore do not consider the Ombudsman should investigate this part of the complaint.
9. As I do not consider we should investigate the underlying matter, the Ombudsman would not normally consider Mr B’s associated concerns about the Council’s complaint responses in isolation.
10. So even if the Council did provide incorrect or inaccurate information about the safety measures adopted by its contractors, given my finding that the roadwork sites themselves have not significantly impacted upon Mr B, I do not consider the injustice arising from the alleged fault in the complaints process is significant enough to justify an investigation into that issue.

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Final decision

11. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr B’s complaint. This is because the alleged faults by the Council and its contractors have not caused Mr B a significant injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman