Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s failure to repair an electric vehicle charging point. The Council has now resolved the issue and Mr X’s remaining injustice is not significant enough to warrant our further involvement in the case.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council failed to repair an electric vehicle charging point near his home between December 2018 and December 2019.

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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.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I reviewed the information provided by Mr X, shared my draft decision with him and invited his comments.

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What I found

4. The Council is responsible for an electric vehicle charging point in a car park near to Mr X’s home. Mr X complains it failed to repair the charging point when it stopped working in December 2018. He is also unhappy about the way it dealt with his complaint about the matter.
5. The Council explained to Mr X that it did not know if it could or would repair the charging point as it had allocated funding for new fast-charging points which it would install in 2020. It also suggested there were infrastructure issues with the charging point which it was not sure could be resolved. But the Council’s emails in December 2019 shows the charging point had been fixed without any upgrades and Mr X therefore considers it could and should have done this sooner.
6. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. Councils may decide to allocate funding to the installation and maintenance of electric car charging points but there is no formal requirement or duty to do this. There is also no guarantee that any one charging point will be available for use at any particular time.
7. The fact that the Council took one year to fix the charging point is not in doubt. But it is now fixed and there is no ongoing injustice to Mr X from the issue. While I appreciate it was frustrating for Mr X not to be able to use the charging point this did not stop him from being able to use his car over the period and any injustice he has from the issue is not significant enough to warrant further investigation.
8. Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council has dealt with his complaint. But 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

9. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council has resolved the issue and Mr X’s injustice is not significant enough to warrant our further involvement in the case.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman