Decision Report 201404595

Summary

Mr C complained to us that the council had failed to take action on his request for remedial gardening works. He said that he told the council that an area close to his home was in need of works. He said that the council agreed, and advised him that works would take place. He said that he noticed this had not happened and approached the council for an explanation. Mr C said the council responded to say that weeding would only be done once a year and referred him to the complaints section of their website. Mr C added that when he tried to query this with the council they terminated his phone call saying they had no further comment.

We found that the council had advised Mr C that a few areas of improvement would be carried out over the coming weeks but that when Mr C queried this they then said this work is only done once a year. The council were unable to provide us with any evidence that the works had been carried out. We also found their refusal to comment on Mr C's questions to be unreasonable, so we upheld Mr C's complaints.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• issue a letter of apology to Mr C for failing to carry out the promised remedial work;
• issue a letter of apology to Mr C for failing to deal appropriately with his enquiry/complaint about remedial work;
• share the outcome of this letter with the relevant complaints handling staff; and
• take steps to ensure that maintenance work that is agreed to is recorded appropriately and that once the work is complete, this too is recorded and dated on worksheets as appropriate.