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Case ref:201205188
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Date:August 2013
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Body:The City of Edinburgh Council
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Sector:Local Government
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Outcome:Upheld, recommendations
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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.