Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about how the Council handled her personal injury claim and subsequent complaint. This is because we would not be able to separate out a complaint about the process when the substantive matter lies outside our jurisdiction.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about the Council’s handling of her personal injury claim and also complaint after tripping on a faulty Council pavement in December 2023.
2. Mrs X reports she broke her shoulder, sustained severe bruising and had a major operation. She says she was also affected mentally by the lack of information on her claim.
3. Mrs X would like a review of the case handling and a review of the report from the Highways department.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
5. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
6. The Act says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered information provided by Mrs. X.
8. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

9. Mrs X explains she suffered a serious shoulder injury in December 2023 necessitating a major operation that left her requiring 8 months of physiotherapy.
10. Mrs X made a claim to the Council in February 2024 and the Council denied liability for her injuries in October 2024. She also made a complaint to the Council via its corporate complaints procedure.
11. The Ombudsman does not normally investigate personal injury complaints, and this includes complaints about the claim process and complaint handling. This is because the core personal injury issue is that an organisation has been negligent. Negligence claims are determined by the courts. And we expect a person who has a personal injury claim to make use of their court remedy.
12. We find that it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about case handling and complaints procedures when we are not investigating the substantive matter. While I can understand Mrs X’s frustration by the time taken to achieve responses and her time taken in chasing up progress, it would be difficult to investigate the process/complaint issues in isolation or achieve a meaningful outcome without straying into the core issue of negligence.
13. So, we will not investigate this complaint.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because the process and complaint issues cannot be separated out from the personal injury claim to be decided in court.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman