Miss X complains about the Council’s failure to respond to her personal injury claim after she broke her ankle on the public highway. We will not investigate because it is reasonable for Miss X to pursue her claim by taking the Council to court.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains about the Council’s failure to respond to her personal injury claim after she broke her ankle on a pothole on the public highway.
2. Miss X says this has negatively impacted her running career. And also that the handling of her claim has been frustrating and stressful.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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:

• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• there is another body better placed to consider this complaint, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

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

4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by Miss X.

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My assessment

6. We will not investigate. This is because the court is best placed to consider Miss X’s claim for compensation.
7. Only the court can decide if an organisation has been negligent and so should pay damages. We cannot recommend actions or payments that ‘punish’ the organisation.
8. I cannot decide whether the Council has been negligent and have no powers to enforce an award of damages. This means I would usually expect someone in Miss X’s position to seek a remedy in the courts, directly or through her insurers. I do not consider there is any reason why Miss X cannot do this, so we will not investigate this complaint.
9. With respect to the Council failing to respond to Miss X’s claim, we would not be able to separate out this issue and investigate it on its own. This is because it is inextricably linked to the substantive matter . It is not a good use of public money to investigate this issue on its own when we are not considering the main issue.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint as it is reasonable for her to pursue her compensation claim by taking the Council to court.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman