Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about how the Council arranged vehicle and pedestrian access during temporary road works. This complaint is late and there are no good reasons why it could not be made sooner.

The complaint

1. Mr X was unhappy with the extent of the Council’s consideration of vehicle and pedestrian access as well as safety matter, when it carried out temporary road works to fill potholes.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
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 injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

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

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. In 2022, Mr X wrote to the Council expressing his dissatisfaction about arrangements the Council had put in place during temporary road works. He said this because he believed that:
• The Council had not properly notified local transport companies;
• Arrangements made for vehicle and pedestrian access was poor, and;
• he said he nearly collided with a vehicle.
7. The Council replied to Mr X and apologised that he had had a bad experience and promised to feed his comments back to the staff it had contracted to do the works. Mr X remained unhappy with this response.
8. We will not investigate this complaint, because it is late and there are no good reasons why Mr X could not have complained to us sooner.
9. In any case even if it was not late, we would not investigate, because any injustice there may have been, is not significant and given the passage of time, there is no meaningful outcome we could now achieve.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because it is late.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman