Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s decision to refuse her application for a dropped kerb. This is because Mrs X has waited more than 12 months to raise the complaint with us.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains the Council wrongly refused her application for a dropped kerb. She says there are often no spaces to park on the road and this causes her distress and disappointment.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I reviewed Mrs X’s complaint and the Council’s responses. I shared my draft decision with Mrs X and invited her comments.

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What I found

5. Mrs X applied to the Council for a dropped kerb in 2019. She set out three options in her application including the conversion of her back garden into a parking area. The Council inspected her property but refused her application; it said this was because the parking area did not meet its minimum depth of 4.8m from the edge of the footpath and because the proposed dropped kerb was within 10m of a junction.
6. Mrs X is unhappy with the Council’s decision. She says the Council did not properly consider the option of converting her back garden into a parking area and that, in her opinion, there is sufficient depth to meet the Council’s criteria. But she does not mention the issue of proximity to the road junction, which would itself be sufficient reason to refuse the application, and her complaint is late. The Council wrote to Mrs X refusing her application in July 2019 and Mrs X did not complain to us about the decision until November 2020, some 16 months later.
7. Our offices were closed from late March to 29 June 2020 but this does not provide good reason for the delay in bringing the complaint to us. The Council informed Mrs X she may complain about the decision in July 2019 but she did not seek to escalate the matter between August 2019 and her formal complaint in April 2020. The Council referred Mrs X to us in May 2020 but Mrs X waited more than five months to lodge her complaint. I will not therefore exercise our discretion to investigate the complaint further.

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Final decision

8. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the complaint is late and I have seen no good reasons to exercise our discretion to investigate it.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman