Summary: We will not investigate Mrs B’s complaint about the Council’s handling of roadworks in her area. This is because Mrs B has not suffered a significant injustice which would justify public money being spent on an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mrs B complains Council roadworks blocked access to her road for two days even though no work was actually being done during this period. Mrs B says workers prevented deliveries being made to properties on her road and she suffered two days of missed deliveries. Mrs B would like the Council to accept it was at fault and apologise for the inconvenience she was caused.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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 an investigation if we decide any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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

3. Our role is to consider complaints where the person bringing the complaint has suffered significant personal injustice as a direct result of the actions or inactions of the organisation. This means we will normally only investigate a complaint where the complainant has suffered serious loss, harm, or distress as a direct result of faults or failures.

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mrs B.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. The Council has explained that it had to use parts of Mrs B’s road to park vehicles and machinery during nearby highway works.
7. The Council says it does not prevent access to properties and its traffic management staff would not have turned away a delivery.
8. To form a view on what happened we would need to start an investigation. But, we must use public money carefully and focus our investigations on complaints of significant and serious injustice. The impact of these roadworks on Mrs B was for a relatively short period of time and an investigation into what happened would not be a good use of our limited resources.
9. So, we will not investigate this complaint.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Mrs B’s complaint because she has not suffered a serious or significant injustice which would justify an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman