Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Transport for London’s monitoring of traffic patterns following a road re-design. This is because we are unlikely to achieve an outcome which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains Transport for London (TFL) has not monitored the impact on traffic of a road re-design. He says this has caused the street he lives on to become significantly busier.
2. Mr X also complains about the way TFL responded to his complaint.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

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

4. 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/care provider has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
5. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Authority.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Mr X complained TFL has not monitored the impact a road re-design it carried out in 2019, as it had said it would.
9. TFL responded to say that it had not monitored the impact in the way it had planned to as the traffic patterns were impacted by Covid shortly after the re-design was completed. It also explained there are other factors which have also impacted traffic in the area.
10. It explained it has regularly reviewed the traffic patterns over the past few years and manages the traffic flow through the re-designed road.
11. There is no way for us to establish whether the outcome would have been any different even if TFL had monitored traffic as it originally planned to and found the re-design had caused a significant increase in traffic. This is because other factors have impacted traffic in the area since the re-design.
12. Although TFL has not monitored in the way Mr X would have preferred, how it reacts to the changes and amends its approach is a decision TFL is entitled to make.
13. Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council dealt with his complaint. It is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because we are unlikely to achieve a worthwhile outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman