Summary
Mr C complained about the City of Edinburgh Council (the council's) handling of a series of complaints about their management of projects to control small poster advertising within the city. Mr C also complained about the tendering process for an advertising contract.
Mr C said multi-sided drums for sticking posters to had been put in place as a trial project in 2003. Although the project had meant to be reviewed after a year, this had not happened. Over the following twelve years, more drums had been added throughout the city. Mr C had complained the project was not properly managed and that the council had no control over it. He said the council had taken an unreasonable length of time to respond to his complaint and had provided an inaccurate response.
Mr C said the council had not responded at all to his complaint about tendering for advertising contracts. He considered this unreasonable given the length of time the council had taken.
Mr C said he had complained about a specific site where advertising was being placed without the appropriate permission being given by the council. When permission was requested, it was denied, but the council failed to take enforcement action.
Mr C also complained the council had provided inaccurate responses to his complaints. He said he had proved this using information he had obtained from the council.
Mr C said none of his complaints had been handled reasonably by the council. He also suggested the council's responses had been inaccurate and confusing.
The council accepted they had taken too long to respond to Mr C's complaints and that in one case, they had not responded at all. They said they had received a significant amount of correspondence from Mr C about the same issues. The council did not accept their complaint responses were inaccurate, confusing or misleading.
We found the council's handling of Mr C's complaints was unreasonable and failed to follow their own complaints procedure. The council had not responded at all to one of Mr C's complaints. Although the council had accepted there were delays in responding, we did not find evidence they recognised the length of these delays, and they had not provided an explanation for the failure to respond at all to one of Mr C's complaints.
We found the council's response to Mr C's complaint about advertising drums was inaccurate and that they had failed to keep appropriate records about the project. The council were unable to provide evidence of any project management or assessment and it was unclear how the project could have been assessed for success or failure. Although the council's internal correspondence accepted Mr C's complaint had identified areas of risk to the council they did not indicate to Mr C whether his complaints had been upheld.
We found the council had generally failed to handle Mr C's complaints reasonably. He had been able to demonstrate that their responses were inaccurate with information he had obtained from them following their responses to his complaints. We found the council had failed to follow their complaints handling procedures when dealing with any of his complaints and that staff appeared unaware of their responsibilities in this regard.
We found there were significant concerns about the failure to keep proper records about the advertising projects and the continual postponement by the council of a full assessment of them. This was despite repeated statements by the council to Mr C that the projects had been reviewed.
Redress and recommendations
The Ombudsman recommends that the Council:
- provide a full response to Mr C's complaint 201508737 addressing each of the points raised by him;
- carry out a full review of the complaints handling in these cases to establish the lessons to be learnt for handling future complex complaints;
- provide evidence that all the officers involved in responding to these complaints have undergone complaints handling training;
- conduct a full review of their management of all the various advertising projects from their inception as proposed in 2012 and provide their findings to the Ombudsman;
- provide evidence of the actions taken to improve internal communication in view of the acknowledged failings in this case; and
- apologise to Mr C for the failings identified in this report.