Summary: There was no fault by the Council in a complaint which alleged council officers misled councillors on a petitions panel by misinterpreting government guidelines so the Council would not take any action on the petition panel’s wishes to improve safety on a local road.

The complaint

1. Mr X and Mr Y complain on their own behalf as well as that of a group of residents. They say council officers misled councillors on a petitions panel by misinterpreting government guidelines so the Council would not take any action on the petitions panel’s wishes to improve safety on a local road.
2. The complainants say:
• The highways team misrepresented Department for Transport guidance to mislead them and dismiss their valid safety concerns.
• The highways team demonstrated a clear reluctance to follow the direction of the petitions panel and adopted a nonsensical approach which would not address the safety concerns along the full length of the road and would not met normal speed limit implementation practice.
• All the technical points in their letter of 13 November 2018 were not acknowledged or responded to and were ignored.
• The highways and legal teams ignored their requests for involvement.
• Subsequent to the petitions panel decision, the highways team repeatedly pursued their personal views, misinterpreted DfT guidance and misled the petitions panel councillors and the petitioners while ignoring their points and corrections.
• The approach agreed by the petitions panel to proceed with an experimental traffic regulation order to reduce the speed limit from 40mph to 30mph was suddenly halted by a legal technicality but no legal alternative was explored or suggested. This again showed a systemic reluctance to address the safety concerns of the petitioners and the petitions panel.
• The highways and legal teams deliberately skewered the scoring to justify no action and have not responded to their points.
• The legal team misinterpreted the facts to justify no further action regardless of the decision of the petitions panel.
3. Mr X and Mr Y also say that the officer who drafted the Council’s final complaint response to them could not have reviewed all relevant correspondence in three days and so the response was not a thorough review.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I reviewed the complaint and background information provided by the complainants and the Council. I sent a draft decision statement to the complainants as well as the Council and considered the comments of both parties on it.

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What I found

7. The complainants presented a petition to the Council’s petitions panel in October 2018. They wanted the Council to change the speed limit on a local road from its present limit of 40mph to 30mph.
8. Prior to the panel meeting in October 2018, the complainants had been in contact with the Council’s traffic collision reduction team manager. The officer wrote to one of the complainants in February 2018 to say the Council would not support a reduction of the speed limit on the road. The officer said Department for Transport (DfT)guidance on setting speed limits was relevant but consideration was also given to the look and feel of a village. The officer said many properties were set back from the road and are only visible on one side of the road. The officer said the road felt more than a rural lane than a village setting.
9. The officer said the traffic surveys carried out in September 2017 showed adherence to a lower speed limit would require regular enforcement and government guidance was clear speed limits should not be set where regular and frequent enforcement would be required to achieve good adherence to the limit.
10. The officer referred to a potential for an increase in overtaking that would be caused by a lower speed limit as well as a lack of data to support an application for a lower speed limit.
11. At the panel meeting in October 2018, the complainants say they provided rebuttal arguments against the officer’s view. They said the officer was generating his own criteria to mislead them and fob them off.
12. The panel decided the Council should investigate the issues raised by the petitioners. In a letter to the complainants following the panel meeting, the cabinet member for natural and built environment said the rebuttals they made against officer comments required investigation by the Council’s legal team before a decision could be made. The legal team would clarify whether experimental traffic regulation orders could be used for speed limit changes.
13. The councillor said he had asked the collision reduction team manager to request a pre-feasibility study to investigate the provision of a facility for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists on the road. He also asked the manager to contact Dorset Police to see if the Police would reconsider its statement to the petitions panel that a 30mp limit on the road was unsuitable after taking account of evidence gathered by a local speed watch group.
14. The collision team manager wrote to the complainants at the start of November 2018. He said the legal team found the statements he made were valid and appropriate but there was scope for a 30mph speed limit to be installed under an experimental traffic regulation order on a section of the road and not its entirety.
15. The manager said the petitions panel had agreed to install a 30mph limit on a section of the road. The officer said there was some ambiguity surrounding the ‘level of frontage development’ when looking at DfT guidance. This explained why the Council opted for an experimental traffic order on a section of the road to test the appropriateness of the 30mph speed limit. The officer said the Council’s legal advice was that the 40mph limit on the remainder of the road was valid.
16. The officer said he would order a number of surveys within the section of the road to be used for the experiment. The surveys would record volume and speed.
17. The officer said the pre-feasibility study into provision for vulnerable road users on the road had been set up and was likely to be completed by the end of December 2018. The officer provided a copy of a scoring matrix and weighting that would be used in the study.
18. The complainants wrote to the cabinet member for natural and built environment in response. They challenged the Council’s decision to use only a section of the road for the experimental traffic order. They said DfT guidance on village speed limits was clear on frontage development. They said the whole road was compliant with DfT guidance for a 30mph speed limit.
19. They said all the points they made at the panel meeting had been ignored. They queried the content of the manager’s letter. They asked the cabinet member to provide the legal advice referred to in the manager’s letter.
20. The cabinet member passed their letter to the manager for a response. The manager explained the legal advice was privileged and so could not be shared with the complainants. The officer said the Council had not ignored the points made by the complainants but had taken them into consideration.
21. The manager explained why the 40mph was appropriate for sections of the road with reference to government guidance. The manager also provided further explanations on the surveys the Council would carry out as well as traffic calming measures in the pre-feasibility study. The manager explained why enforcement measures would not be considered at that stage.
22. The complainants wrote to the cabinet member again. They said the tone and comments within the manager’s last letter led them to believe the manager was seeking reasons to endorse and justify his prior position. They said the manager was required to keep his personal views to himself and act on the instructions and policy set out by the policy.
23. They said the officer relished recounting how his staff observed an overtaking vehicle when setting up a camera whereas many people who had lived in the village for decades had never seen anyone overtaking.
24. They queried the manager’s statement that the Council would seek the views of the community on the proposed 30mph limit. They pointed out there were over a thousand signatures on their petition as well as personal comments. They provided further anecdotal accounts by residents.
25. They again provided reasons why they disagreed with the manager’s comments with reference to DfT guidance.
26. They asked the cabinet member to respond and intervene on their behalf.
27. This time the Council’s response was drafted by its legal team. The Council was satisfied the matter was being dealt with properly under its standard procedure. It did not find the manager’s comments or tone amounted to bias. It said the manager’s job was to provide his professional opinion to members and pointed out Dorset Police supported the manager’s stance on the reduction of the speed limit. It said the manager was now working to deliver the pre-feasibility study and experimental traffic order even though his professional opinion was unchanged.
28. The Council completed its pre-feasibility study in January 2019. The result was conveyed to the complainants by the legal team. The Council found a footway and/or cycleway on the road scored low on its scoring matrix and so ended its investigation. The legal officer who drafted the letter also explained why she had retracted earlier advice to officers that an experimental traffic regulation order could be used to lower the speed limit on a section of the road. She said her original advice was based on evidence that other local authorities had used experimental traffic regulation orders to trial changes in speed limits as well as her interpretation of section 9 of the Road Traffic Act 1984.
29. However, she explained that she had considered the matter further and found that experimental traffic regulation orders could not be used for speed limits because of section 3(3) of same Act. The officer said the Council would not proceed with a 30mph speed limit under an experimental traffic regulation order. She said officers would liaise with the petitions panel and the Police before contacting the complainants again.
30. The complainants wrote to the legal officer. They provided points to counter the officer’s findings.
31. They said the officer should consider making a traffic order rather than a traffic regulation order and so support the petition panel’s decision. They provided an example of Staffordshire County Council using a traffic order to impose an experimental speed limit.
32. They said there was something wrong with the scoring system used by the Council for the pre-feasibility study. They said the scoring framework did not take account of the Council’s failure to meet its statutory obligations in particular a duty under Section 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.
33. A senior solicitor responded on the Council’s behalf. The officer was satisfied with the legal interpretation of sections 3 and 9 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 set out in the Council’s January letter. The Council did not consider changing the name of the order to traffic order would enable the Council to make an experimental traffic regulation order to impose a speed limit. The Council was not satisfied examples of other authorities implementing speed changes using experimental traffic regulation orders should change its position.
34. The Council was satisfied its scoring matrix took account of its duty under Section 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.
35. The complainants wrote to members of the petitions panel. They iterated their earlier comments and asked the panel to demand a resolution from the various departments.
36. They then wrote to the senior solicitor. They challenged the contents of his letter. They iterated their earlier comments on the experimental traffic regulation order and the scoring matrix.
37. The complainants sought advice from the DfT. The DfT stated an experimental order can be used to impose a speed limit and suggested the complainants point this out to the Council.
38. The senior solicitor told the complainants the Council would respond to their complaint formally. In terms of a suggestion they made that a temporary speed limit could be imposed by the Council under section 88 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, the solicitor said the Council cannot do so because the power is only relevant to the relevant authority which was the Secretary of State and not the Council.
39. The solicitor said the Council would contact the DfT because its interpretation of the Act was different from that of the DfT.
40. The solicitor said the outcome of the panel meeting in October 2018 was to request a pre-feasibility study to investigate the provision of a facility for vulnerable road users as well as clarification on the use of experimental traffic regulation orders. The solicitor said the panel did not go as far as the complainants suggested in their letter.
41. The DfT later wrote to the Council to make clear that experimental orders cannot be used to implement speed restrictions.
42. The Council’s formal complaint response summed up its earlier responses.

Finding

43. I do not propose to provide a point by point analysis of this complaint in this statement. This is because the complaint is simply one in which Mr X and Mr Y disagree with the Council’s officers.
44. The Ombudsman cannot find fault by a local authority because a complainant disagrees with the judgement of its officers.
45. I am satisfied the petitions panel asked officers to consider a pre-feasibility study and investigate the use of an experimental traffic regulation order. That is what the Council’s officers did. The Council’s officers also provided reasoned justification for the decisions they made. I note Mr X and Mr Y disagree with the explanations given by officers, but it is not then for the Ombudsman to substitute his judgement for that of the Council’s officers in the absence of fault in the way officers reached their decisions. There was no fault in the process leading to the decisions.
46. As to the complaint that the final stage complaint response was not thorough because the officer took only three days to compile the response, I do not find fault by the Council. The complainants cannot know the exact amount of time it took the officer to draft the response and three days is sufficient time to consider all the papers in this case.

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Final decision

47. I did not find fault by the Council in the matters raised here. I have closed the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman