Summary: Mr X complained about the Council allowing a developer to use his existing street name for a new development within the Salisbury postal district. The Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault causing injustice to Mr X which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about the Council allowing a developer to use his existing street name for a new development within the Salisbury postal district. He says this has resulted in misdirected deliveries and may cause confusion for the emergency services who were not properly consulted.

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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 injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I have considered all the information which Mr X submitted with his complaint. Mr X has commented on a draft copy of my decision.

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What I found

4. Mr X says he has lived at his existing address since 1995 when it was newly built. The Council recently allowed a developer to name a new development in another postcode area to have the same street name which has led to deliveries being made to the wrong street. He was concerned that emergency services may be misdirected to the wrong address causing delays which could be serious.
5. The Council told Mr X that it does not consider the street name similarity to be in breach of its policies on naming streets because they are in different postcode zones. The prefix part of the postcode has a different postal number for each street and for deliveries or satellite navigation purposes the first three characters of the postcode should be sufficient to distinguish the streets.
6. The postcode district in which Mr X lives covers over 640 square miles and to have streets with the same name within this is not unusual and should not be a serious concern if they are within different postcode prefixes.
7. There is not sufficient evidence that the Council has failed to follow street naming policy or that the streets are indistinguishable within the postal area to say there was fault in this matter.

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Final decision

8. The Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault causing injustice to Mr X which would warrant an investigation.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman