Essex County Council (24 005 045)
Category : Transport and highways > Street furniture and lighting
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 09 Sep 2024
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of road closures for an event taking place at the time Ms X was making a car journey within the area. This is because the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met.
The complaint
- Ms X complains about the Council’s handling of road closures for an event in an area which she was trying to drive to whereby the drive instead of taking 30 minutes took four hours and 30 minutes. She says there was a lack of knowledge by the marshals, a lack of diversions and the Council had not done enough to make those living outside the area aware of the event.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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:
- there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
- any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
- any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
- we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
- further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
- there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant, including the Council’s response to the complaint.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- We do not investigate every complaint we receive and while Ms X’s frustration at the length of her journey as a result of the event is noted, there are insufficient grounds to warrant an investigation of the complaint.
- The Council has already apologised for the inconvenience caused to her and has confirmed that her feedback will be included in the debrief and event review process carried out by the event organisers. An investigation by the Ombudsman is unlikely to usefully add to this.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman