Independent and a Fair hearing was what I read I could expect from the LGO in Coventry when I complained about the Council placing a lighting column in a dangerous position at my home.What I have experienced is rudeness, failure to accept my obvious evidence against the Council being at fault, accepting mistruths and unproven evidence from the Council, dragging out the complaint over 9 months instead of the recommended 3, lied to by an investigator and an assistant Ombudsman, and a refusal to escalate the problems I was receiving to a higher authority within the service i.e. The Ombudsman.When it became obvious the LGO in conjunction with the Council were using tactics to belittle my complaint I told them to withdraw it before a final decision was made (I had read on an Ombudsman website I could do this) but the LGO refused to let me and went ahead with a final decision in the Councils favour.They also refused to allow a review and placed a cut down abbreviated version of their decision in the LGO archives 6 days after making it, it should not have been put in until 6 WEEKS after.There was an obvious urgency to get their unfair findings out to the public as I did not get to know until the day after it went public.However, if it was in the interests of the public then why not give them the full details ?The Council and the Ombudsman have refused to comment any further and are refusing to reply to requests under the FOI Act 2000.There is very little point in having a FOI Act when these Government authorities have a FOI Officer employed to reply in a negative way to your requests in the same way that an insurance underwriter would get out of paying out in a claim because of hidden small print in the T & Cs. Finally, a representative I have been in touch with over this matter informs me that the Council I am referring to is like dealing with a "nest of vipers" but I don't think that is fair on vipers.Mr X (As the LGO prefers to call me)
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The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, We are the final stage for complaints about councils, all adult social care providers (including care homes and home care agencies) and some other organisations providing local public services. We are a f...