West Sussex County Council (19 008 864)
Category : Transport and highways > Highway repair and maintenance
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 21 Oct 2019
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint that the Council wrongly measured the depth of potholes in the road. This is because the matter did not cause Mr X significant injustice.
The complaint
- The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council wrongly measured the depth of potholes in the road and has declined to apologise to him for this.
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:
- it is unlikely we would find fault, or
- 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)
How I considered this complaint
- I reviewed Mr X’s complaint and the Council’s responses. I shared my draft decision with Mr X and invited his comments.
What I found
- Mr X contacted the Council to report potholes in the road near to his property in 2019. The Council inspected the road but says it found no potholes more than 40mm deep. Mr X complained and his local councillor attended with a highways engineer shortly afterwards and confirmed there were some potholes as much as 50mm deep. Mr X says he was put to trouble and inconvenience to prove the depth of the potholes so the Council would repair them. He wants the Council to apologise.
- The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. While I appreciate Mr X’s frustration at having to prove the depth of the potholes, the injustice he claims is not significant enough to warrant the cost of investigation. The Council has resolved the original issue by accepting the need for repairs and we will not spend further time investigating the complaint to obtain an apology.
Final decision
- The Ombudsman wikll not investigate this complaint. This is because the matter has not caused Mr X significant injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman