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Decision report 201205188

  • Case ref:
    201205188
  • Date:
    August 2013
  • Body:
    The City of Edinburgh Council
  • Sector:
    Local Government
  • Outcome:
    Upheld, recommendations
  • Subject:
    communication staff attitude and confidentiality

Summary

Mr C represents a number of local residents opposed to an ongoing planning application. He wrote to the council with concerns about the lack of a transport assessment in relation to the application. Mr C did not believe the council had responded to his letter. When the council clarified the items of correspondence that they believed responded to the letter, Mr C was dissatisfied and brought his complaints to us.

After discussing this with Mr C we decided that the only matter we could consider was the failure to address points in his letter. We tried to resolve this with the council, but Mr C remained dissatisfied and resubmitted his complaint to us. We decided that the council had not reasonably addressed some of the concerns Mr C had raised and that it was unreasonable that they had not identified this until we became involved.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

  • apologise to Mr C that their responses to his letter and subsequent related contact were not reasonable;
  • provide a reasonable response to Mr C's enquiries; and
  • review their practice to ensure that correspondence querying the relevance of their complaint responses is properly considered without the need for SPSO involvement.

 

Updated: March 13, 2018