Local Government

Summary

Mr and Mrs C complained about a bill the council issued them for rechargable repairs. A year previously the council had helped check and fit three light fittings for Mr and Mrs C. When they terminated the tenancy they had asked at the council offices if they should leave the light fittings in place. Mr and Mrs C said that the council staff phoned another member of staff who advised them to leave the lights and there would be no charge.

When Mr and Mrs C complained the council said that they had spoken to staff, who said that they would not have given that advice.

During our investigation we found that the council had not spoken to the relevant staff during their investigation. We asked them to speak to those staff members during the course of our investigation, but they did not.

As the council could not demonstrate that they had thoroughly investigated the main point of Mr and Mrs C's complaint, we upheld their complaint.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• remind relevant staff of the importance of complying with the SPSO complaints handling principles;
• consider removing the outstanding charges; and
• apologise to Mr and Mrs C for the failings we identified.

Summary

Mr C complained that the council unreasonably charged him for repairs after he vacated their property. When he left the property the council had sent him a bill for repairs that they said needed carried out. Mr C said he had caused some of the damage, but not other items that were listed. The council then cancelled some of the charges but said that the remaining ones stood.

Our investigation found that the council had photographic evidence of the repairs that they ultimately asked Mr C to pay for. We also found that they had clear guidance in their policy about charging for damage, and that this was in the tenancy agreement that Mr C had signed. Therefore, we did not uphold Mr C's complaints.

Summary

Mr C complained that the council had failed to consider a councillor's request that his neighbour's planning application be referred to the council's planning committee. The councillor had emailed the council to ask that they let him know when a decision was due to be made on the application so that he could ask for it to be referred to the planning committee. The council had then notified councillors that the application would be decided by a planning officer under delegated authority, unless a request to refer the application to the planning committee was received within seven days. This addressed the councillor's request. Under the council's scheme of delegation, councillors have seven days in which to request referral to the planning committee, otherwise the council issue the decision on the application. The councillor also has to prepare a statement of reasons giving the reasons why the planning committee should determine the application. No request for referral to the planning committee was received within the seven day period and the council then made a decision on the application.

We took independent advice on this case from one of our planning advisers. We found that the council had acted in line with their scheme of delegation and we did not uphold this aspect of Mr C's complaint.

Mr C also complained that the council had ignored a character appraisal for the local area (a description of the architectural and historic character and significance of the area) when they made a decision on the application. We found that the council had taken the character appraisal into account, but had found that this conflicted with national guidance, which carries more weight than local policies. We did not, therefore, uphold this complaint.

Summary

Mr C submitted a quote to the council to provide them with equipment for a piece of work they were doing. He explained that he prepared a specification and submitted the quote on the basis that he would be considered a 'specialist supplier' and that, as a result, no other tenders would be sought for this work. He made clear in his quote that it included a fee for the preparatory work which would only be payable in the event that he was not considered a 'specialist supplier'. He said that the council subsequently sought two further quotes and awarded the tender to another party. He complained to us that the council had said he would be considered as a specialist supplier and yet they awarded the contract elsewhere, that they did not treat all three companies who tendered in a consistent way, and that they refused to pay his fee.

The council said that Mr C was never told he would be the sole bidder and that they were unable to tender in this way. They said that they did treat all three companies consistently and that they would not pay the fee as they did not agree to the specialist supplier status.

We could not say whether Mr C was advised that he would be considered a specialist supplier. We did find, however, that the council had not followed the correct procedure as they approached him for a quote before seeking two further quotes. They should have obtained all three simultaneously. We also found conflicting comments about the extent to which Mr C's tender was used to develop the brief and specification for the other quotes, and we questioned the council's assumptions that tenderers may not be able to complete the work within the deadline. We also noted that they did not notify Mr C of the outcome of the tender. As the council had not followed the correct process when tendering for the contract and as, on balance, we were not convinced that all tenderers were treated in the same way, we upheld this aspect of his complaint. We recommended that they review their procedures for tendering, apologise to Mr C and pay his fee.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• confirm to us that steps have been taken to ensure that future procurement/tendering processes will be carried out in a fair and consistent manner;
• pay Mr C the requested service fee for their specification and design work; and
• apologise to Mr C for the process failings which this investigation has highlighted.

When it was originally published in January 2015, this case was wrongly categorised as 'fully upheld'.  The correct category is 'some upheld'.

Summary

Mr C complained to the council that they had not taken action in response to reports of health and safety issues at a residential caravan site, including abandoned vehicles, and piles of wood and debris that could be a fire hazard. The council first handled Mr C's complaint as a service request. He then wrote to the council again, asking for his original letter to be treated as a complaint. The council told Mr C that he would need to agree with them what he was complaining about and that after this they would respond to his complaint within 20 working days. The council met with Mr C three weeks later and agreed the points of the complaint. They investigated his complaint and gave him a response another four weeks later.

Mr C was not satisfied with the council's response, and brought his complaint to us. He complained that they had failed to deal with his complaint in line with their procedures, failed to take action in response to health and safety concerns at the site, and failed to consider formal action under the legislation to revoke the site owners' licence.

We investigated Mr C's complaint, and found that the council had not dealt with it in line with their procedures. They had wrongly interpreted the complaints handling timescales and there were unreasonable delays in responding to him. They also gave some incorrect information in their investigation report and failed to clearly respond to all of the agreed points of complaint. We also found, on balance, that they had not taken reasonable action in response to Mr C’s concerns about health and safety. While they had responded well to these at first, there was no evidence that they then followed up appropriately on the measures they put in place. However, we found that the council had not failed to consider taking action under the legislation, as they were waiting for action by a third party, which could resolve the issues, before considering formal action themselves.

We issued a decision in which we recommended, amongst other things, that the council consider developing a policy in relation to their health and safety enforcement obligations. In response, the council provided copies of several policies relating to health and safety, which they had not provided before. We pointed out that they should have sent us these during our investigation, and we issued a revised decision on the complaint, with new recommendations.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• remind staff of the requirements of the model complaints handling procedure in relation to timeframes;
• raise the complaints handling failings our investigation identified with the relevant staff to ensure a similar situation does not re-occur;
• apologise to Mr C for the failures our investigation identified;
• demonstrate to us that action has been taken in relation to the health and safety concerns Mr C raised;
• remind staff of the requirement in the enforcement policy to inform a person requesting action of the outcome of their request, including where the officer feels that no action is required, or the request is not justified;
• review the enforcement policy, to ensure that there is no unintentional overlap with the complaints handling policy; and
• undertake an internal audit to ensure that requests for action on health and safety issues and reports of accidents are handled in line with the enforcement policy and service delivery plan, including record-keeping requirements, and notify us of the findings.

Summary

Mr C complained that the council had failed to formally inform him when a planning application was submitted for development on a neighbouring property. Mr C owned land, on which buildings relating to his business had been erected, next to the proposed development site.

The council said that as there was land near to the planning site that did not contain obvious premises, an advert was placed in the local newspaper to fulfil their obligation to provide notification of the proposed development.

We took independent advice from one of our planning advisers, and we found that the council's actions were reasonable and in line with the relevant guidance on neighbour notification.

Summary

Following previous complaints, Mrs C had continued to have concerns about how her child's primary school had dealt with new disciplinary matters and incidents of bullying. When she complained to the council, she said they had again not dealt with her complaints adequately, not ensured an impartial investigation, and not responded appropriately to her communications.

Our investigation found that the complaints had been appropriately investigated under the council's two-stage complaints handling procedure, with the school's head teacher initially responding to her complaints. When Mrs C remained dissatisfied, the council escalated her complaints to the next stage for which they had appointed an independent person, a retired schools inspector, to conduct the investigation. Mrs C had expressed concern that as the independent person had previously worked with the head teacher, they could not be impartial. We found no evidence, however, to suggest that the investigation was not conducted in an independent and impartial way.

Summary

Ms C complained that her child had been racially abused by another pupil at school. Ms C said the school had not contacted her on the day of the incident – unlike the other child's parents - and she found out about it from her child that evening. Ms C said she spoke with the head teacher the next day, who confirmed that the other child involved had been punished but would not confirm the specific punishment. Ms C also complained that her younger child had also suffered from bullying on a number of occasions.

Although we fully recognised the significance of Ms C's concerns, the law does not allow us to consider complaints about conduct, curriculum or discipline within schools. This meant our role was to consider whether the council had followed the relevant policies, one of which said that both sets of parents should have been told about the incident. Although Ms C said the school did not contact her, the council said the school had tried to do so without success. While the school's paperwork appeared to indicate that they had tried to phone Ms C, the policy was clear that she should have been informed. Had they been unable to contact Ms C on the phone (or leave a message asking her to contact them), we considered the school could reasonably have sent a brief note home with Ms C's child asking Ms C to contact them or, alternatively, they could have sent a letter. Either of these steps would have demonstrably satisfied the policy and so, taking everything into account, we upheld this complaint.

Ms C told us she had no supporting evidence for her second complaint. The council said the school confirmed there had been no reports (either from Ms C or her children) of any other incidents involving Ms C's children and the head teacher said Ms C had not reported bullying of her younger child, prior to her written complaint. There was no additional evidence of bullying or racial abuse for us to consider and, although we recognised the seriousness of the underlying allegations, we could not establish, on the basis of the evidence available, that the issue with Ms C's younger child was raised with the school. We did not, on balance, uphold Ms C's second complaint.

We made three recommendations with a view to ensuring good record-keeping in the future.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• consider amending their policy to require a record of attempts to contact parents by phone be made;
• remind staff if they cannot contact a parent over the phone they consider contact by other means; and
• remind staff of the importance of completing the relevant forms in terms of their policy.

Summary

Mr C was unhappy about a statutory notice that was served on his property. He was unhappy with the explanations given, the documents received and the charges applied. The council said that they had given reasonable explanations, had provided the necessary documents and charged Mr C appropriately. Mr C disagreed, saying that he should have had this information earlier.

We explained to Mr C that we would not give a view on whether he was appropriately billed as that was a matter for the council - we would only look at how they explained their decisions. Our investigation considered how and when the explanations were given. We found that the council had explained the reasoning for the statutory notice early in the process, provided the documentation requested, apologised for a delay in complaints handling, and added levies and charges in line with council policy. This meant that the council had done as they should have and had handled this reasonably, and we did not uphold Mr C's complaint.

Summary

Mr and Mrs C objected to their next-door neighbour's planning application for an extension. The council granted the application, and Mr and Mrs C complained to us that the application process had been handled unfairly. They raised a number of concerns, including that some information on the application was inaccurate and/or provided after the deadline for comments; that the council had not responded to their correspondence asking questions about the planning application process; that the application had been decided by an officer using delegated powers, when it should have been decided by a committee; and that the officer had failed to take relevant planning considerations and guidelines into account in deciding the application.

After taking independent advice from one of our planning advisers, we upheld one of Mr and Mrs C's complaints - that the council failed to respond to their correspondence asking questions about the planning process. We found that, although the council upheld the complaint about this, they had not apologised or made any recommendations to improve their practices, and we were critical of this failure to learn from what had happened.

We did not uphold the other complaints, as there was no evidence that the council had failed to comply with relevant procedures in allowing additional information to be provided after the deadline for comments, or in deciding the application using delegated powers. While there were minor inaccuracies in the plans the council used, we found that it was reasonable for them to rely on these as the inaccuracies were not so significant that they would affect the decision. The officer had also undertaken a site visit and taken photos to ensure they had accurate information about the site and its surroundings. We also found evidence that the council had taken all of the relevant planning considerations and guidelines into account.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• issue a written apology to Mr and Mrs C for failing to reply to their correspondence;
• review the guidance to case officers to ensure that members of the public receive a response to any questions of fact about planning applications; and
• remind complaints handling staff of the importance of addressing any failings identified in complaints investigations, including by apologising where appropriate.