Summary: The Ombudsman should not pursue this complaint about the approval of a dropped kerb application. This is because the Ombudsman cannot achieve what Mr B wants.

The complaint

1. Mr B complains the Council acted wrongly by approving an application for a dropped kerb near his home. He states he has greater difficulty finding on-street parking as a result.

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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 we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information Mr B provided and discussed the complaint with him. I also considered our decision on Mr B’s previous complaint to us. I viewed online maps and images of Mr B’s street. I gave Mr B the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

4. Mr B lives in a controlled parking zone (CPZ) where there are on-street parking bays and where some residents have dropped kerbs so they can park on their own land. Obviously, providing a dropped kerb might remove space previously used for on-street parking. The Council’s policy says the Council may refuse an application for a dropped kerb in a CPZ if it believes it would lead to inadequate on-street parking space.
5. In 2018 we decided Mr B’s previous complaint to the Ombudsman. Our decision is here. We found the Council had not considered the impact on on-street parking when it approved some dropped kerbs in Mr B’s street. The Council agreed our recommendation to consider and decide this point in future applications. It told us it now does a parking stress calculation for every new dropped kerb application.
6. After that decision, in 2019 a new dropped kerb was installed in Mr B’s street. The Council told Mr B it had approved a dropped kerb in that location several years ago, before our previous decision but the applicant had not had the work done then and when the household requested a dropped kerb in 2019 the Council believed it was bound by its previous approval. So the Council provided the dropped kerb without doing its new parking stress calculation. Mr B sees this as a breach of the agreed action to remedy his previous complaint. The Council disagrees. Mr B also questions whether the recent dropped kerb was really approved several years ago or more recently.
7. The Council now states it will not approve any new dropped kerb applications in Mr B’s street. It also says it visited the street to see if it could install more on-street parking bays but found all available kerb space was already used.
8. The Council apologised to Mr B for initially telling him the 2019 dropped kerb arose from a new application. I consider that apology is sufficient remedy for any raised expectations on that point. The more significant point in terms of the complaint to the Ombudsman is whether the Council was at fault for approving that dropped kerb, either in 2019 or earlier.
9. We do not necessarily pursue every complaint. When deciding whether to pursue a complaint, we can consider whether there is a realistic prospect of achieving what the complainant wants if we were to uphold the complaint.
10. Mr B first told us he wanted the new dropped kerb to be removed and the on-street parking in that location reinstated. After I spoke to Mr B, he stated he wanted the Council to do a ‘parking stress’ calculation in his street and, if that were to find ‘the amount of street parking spaces available is less than regulation specifies, remedial action be taken so as to be compliant.’ So the underlying aim of Mr B’s complaint to us is to achieve more on-street parking near his home.
11. However, there is no legal requirement for any particular level of on-street parking. By creating a CPZ the Council aims to protect on-street parking for local residents but this does not guarantee a particular level of on-street parking per household or within certain areas. Any assessment of the parking impact of dropped kerb applications would take account of the individual context of parking pressures in the area of the application site. This cannot reasonably be retrospective. In a street such as Mr B’s, there is little the Council can do to create more on-street parking as it cannot widen or lengthen the street and it cannot reasonably remove dropped kerbs it has already installed. So, while I understand Mr B’s reasoning, the Ombudsman cannot expect to achieve Mr B’s aim.
12. As well as Mr B’s desired result, I considered what else we might achieve here. If we were to investigate and find the Council was at fault for approving the recent dropped kerb (and I do not know whether we would find such fault), we could make recommendations to improve future decision-making. However, the recommendation we already made (see paragraph 5) is as far as we could reasonably go and we could not achieve more than the Council’s current position of not intending to agree more dropped kerbs in Mr B’s street. There is little point in making the same recommendations again. I note Mr B and the Council disagree about whether the Council broke its agreement to our previous recommendations. However, I shall not investigate whether the Council was at fault on that point as I do not consider we could achieve a worthwhile result.

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Final decision

13. The Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint. This is because the Ombudsman cannot achieve the outcome Mr B wants.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman