Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to prevent parking on a grass verge by residents of the road where Mr X lives. There is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council which has caused any significant injustice to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about the Council’s failure to take action to prevent residents parking on a grass verge on the road where he lives. He wants it to introduce bollards or other obstructions to prevent the grass being damaged by parked vehicles. He also wants it to carry out more enforcement of yellow line restrictions on another part of the road where he says vehicles are being regularly illegally parked.

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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 or continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council’s response.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mr X says that the Council has not taken action to prevent the grass verge on his road from being damaged by residents parking on it. There are some bollards and posts on the verge, including one outside Mr X’s home and this and other restrictions mean that his own driveway access is not being affected. Mr X complained to the Council about the parking issues and it carried out an investigation.
6. The Council told Mr X that the road is narrow and if it introduced bollards or other barriers parking on the road would increase obstruction and reduce visibility for existing residents with off-road parking. The Council is the highway authority and it has powers to decide if new highway features should be introduced. In this case it believes there would be insufficient benefit in carrying out the work Mr X has requested.
7. The Council told him that site visits had not identified illegally parked vehicles on the yellow line restrictions but that parking enforcement would be increased in future to identify if there is a significant problem.
8. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to prevent parking on a grass verge by residents of the road where Mr X lives. There is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council which has caused any significant injustice to warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman