Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council requiring repayment for work it carried out to replace damage paving outside Mr X’s home. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about the Council’s decision to invoice him for damage to the footway outside his home. He says that the paving was already cracked when he purchased his home but the Council says he significantly damaged it with a skip during renovation works and it will charge over £700 for the repairs.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We 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. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mr X says he has been invoiced for over £700 for damage to the footway which the Council says was caused due to a heavy skip being placed on it during building works at his home. He says that he has photographic evidence that the paving was already cracked before the works. The Council accepted that there may have been some cosmetic cracking but that the level of the footway after the works required intervention to remedy the damage and that previous surveys had not identified this before the work to his home.
6. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.
7. In this case the Council says the damage was caused by Mr X’s work and it ahs used s.133 of the Highways Act 1980 to recover the cost of repairing the highway. Mr X could challenge the charge in court if he believes he has sufficient evidence to do so but we cannot determine how the damage occurred.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council requiring repayment for work it carried out to replace damage paving outside Mr X’s home. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman