Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s decision not to put in highway safety measures near his property, and how it dealt with his complaint. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s highways decision-making process to warrant an investigation. We do not investigate councils’ complaint‑handling where we are not investigating the core issues giving rise to the complaint.

The complaint

1. Mr X lives on a bend on a residential road. He complains the Council:
1. has failed to put in measures to make safer his vehicular access on to the highway;
2. had the same officer who handled his initial request reply to his complaint at stage one.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
3. 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. (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 from Mr X, relevant online maps and images, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. We are not an appeal body. We may only criticise a council’s decision where there is evidence of fault in its decision-making process and but for that fault officers would have made a different decision. So we consider the processes councils have followed to make decisions. We cannot replace a council’s decision with our own or someone else’s opinion if the decision has been reached after following proper process.
6. In response to Mr X’s enquiry and complaint, the Council’s officer visited the site, reviewed the accident history for the location and applied relevant policies to inform the decision-making process. The Council decided not to install any of the highways measures Mr X wants.
7. We understand Mr X wants the Council to take account of the safety of the location irrespective of the recorded accidents there, as he considers many near misses have happened. Councils must make their decisions on available and verified information about a location. It is for officers to assess the evidence of risk and apply their professional judgement to determine where they should target the Council’s limited highways resources across all its area to reduce the greatest risks.
8. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making process here to warrant an investigation. Officers followed the appropriate process to make their professional judgement decision and there are no grounds for us to go behind or criticise it. We recognise Mr X disagrees with the decision. But it is not fault for a council to properly make a decision with which someone disagrees.
9. The Council accepts it was an error for the officer who replied to Mr X’s initial enquiry to provide its stage one complaint response and has apologised to him. That officer’s stage one reply was reviewed at stage two by the head of the relevant service, a more senior officer. There is insufficient evidence the Council’s final decision was affected by its complaint-handling error, or disadvantaged Mr X. In any event, we do not investigate councils’ complaint‑handling in isolation where we are not investigating the core issues giving rise to the complaint. It is not a good use of our resources to do so. That limitation applies here so we will not investigate this part of the complaint.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because:
• there is not enough evidence of Council fault in its highways decision to warrant an investigation; and
• we do not investigate councils’ complaint handling where we are not investigating the core issues which gave rise to the complaint.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman