Summary: Mrs X complains about the Council’s decision not to install pedestrian crossings on a road next to sheltered housing. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint as we are unlikely to find fault in the Council’s actions. And Mrs X has not suffered any personal injustice.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about the Council’s decision not to install pedestrian crossings on a road next to sheltered housing. She says without crossings, elderly residents cannot reach the bus stops and are restricted from accessing the bus service.

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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
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained
• we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants

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

3. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amend

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information provided by Mrs X. She commented on the draft version of this decision.

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What I found

5. In 2017 Mrs X presented a petition to her Member of Parliament, asking for pedestrian crossings to enable elderly residents to reach nearby bus stops. The MP sent the petition to the Council.
6. The Council says it carried out an assessment to investigate the justification for installing a crossing. The resulting report concluded that pedestrian crossings were not appropriate. But it recommended installing dropped kerbs and tactile paving.
7. Following the report, the Council says it commissioned an independent road safety audit. This revealed only 1 slight injury accident had been reported between 2013 and 2018, and this was not because of speeding.

Assessment

8. The Ombudsman will only normally investigate a complaint where the complainant has suffered serious loss, harm or distress as a direct result of faults or failures by the service provider. Also, we will not normally investigate a complaint where the complainant is using their enquiry as a way of raising a wider community campaign.
9. In this case Mrs X has not suffered any injustice because of the Council’s decision not to install the pedestrian crossings. Also, following receipt of the petition, the Council commissioned reports on the feasibility of installing the crossings and considered these before deciding to install dropped kerbs and tactile paving instead.
10. The Ombudsman’s role is mainly to look at the way the Council carries out its administrative functions – not to look at its spending priorities or its policy decisions which are a matter for the electorate rather than the Ombudsman. Our focus lies on the way it makes its decisions and, in the absence of fault in its processes, we cannot question the merits of its decisions.
11. We can consider whether the Council has properly considered decisions that affect a particular road, but we cannot arbitrate on a complainant’s view about what should happen and the Council’s. From the information supplied it seems the Council has given proper thought to the petition and I have not seen any evidence of procedural irregularity which would allow us to question the Council’s decision.

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Final decision

12. I will not investigate this complaint. This is because we are unlikely to find fault in the way the Council decided not to install the pedestrian crossings. And we do not consider that Mrs X has suffered any personal injustice because of the decision.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman