Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the Council’s use of her email address to report a fictitious pothole as part of its staff training. The Council has explained to Miss X how the error occurred and taken appropriate action to deal with this. It is unlikely further investigation would achieve anything more.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Miss X, complains the Council used her email address to log a fictitious pothole report. She is also unhappy about the Council’s handling of the matter. She says the incident has upset her and caused her stress.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome, or
• the Council has taken appropriate action to remedy the complaint.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6) and 24A(7), as amended)

3. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I reviewed Miss X’s complaint and the Council’s response. I shared my draft decision with Miss X and invited her comments.

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What I found

5. Miss X received an email from the Council in late 2019 acknowledging her report of a pothole on the road. She contacted the Council as she had not reported any potholes and was concerned someone was using her personal details fraudulently.
6. She contacted the Council and spoke to an officer who agreed to look into the matter and get back to her. But she did not receive a substantive response about what had happened until a month later, after she had complained about the delay. At that point the officer explained the Council was carrying out staff training and one advisor had input Miss X’s email address, apparently randomly, as part of a pothole reporting test. The officer confirmed the report had been closed down straight away and that they had requested Miss X’s details be removed from its systems. The officer apologised to Miss X and confirmed they had put in place procedures to ensure it did not happen again. But Miss X was not happy with the officer’s explanation and continued to complain.
7. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. The Council has explained why Miss X received an email acknowledging her pothole report and it has put in place processes to ensure it does not happen again. It has also apologised to Miss X for any distress she suffered.
8. It is unlikely further investigation would lead to a different outcome or that we could achieve anything more for Miss X by investigating her complaint further. The Ombudsman is not a regulator and while Miss X does not accept the Council’s explanation it is unlikely we could prove malice by an individual in using her email address to make the report.
9. If Miss X believes there has been a breach of the General Data Protection Regulations/her personal data the Information Commissioner is better placed to deal with this.
10. While Miss X is also unhappy with the way the Council has dealt with her complaint it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

11. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council has provided a suitable remedy for Miss X and it is unlikely we could achieve anything more.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman