‘ She cannot investigate something that affects all or most of the people in a council’s area. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(7) ).
Those who have submitted, or are about to submit formal complaints against councillors or other public servants, please note.
Save Our Sidmouth 
April 10, 2013 at 3:40 pm
There is nothing new about this statement. As far as I know, the Local Gov. Ombudsman has always been restricted to taking up complaints based on injustice to the person lodging the complaint. The big change that happened some 12-15 years ago is the introduction of “local settlements” which boil down to the complainant receiving a financial compensation for the injustice he/she has experienced, GIVEN that he/she keeps the results of the investigations under wraps and does not publish them in the local press. Anyone who takes the trouble to read the Annual Reports issued by the LGO will find a list of these “Local Settlements”. The FULL investigations by the LGO which are published take longer to process and their incidence has dropped in comparison what used to happen before the late 1990s. The last time I looked into these figures, the
number of complaints lodged p.a. was getting smaller — hardly surprising! Further information can be
found on the website of the watchdog which watches the watchdog — try googling Ombudsmanwatch.