Highways Agency did not use all available evidence to investigate complaint

What happened

The Highways Agency investigated Mr L's claim, seeking information from its contractors, who were responsible for maintaining that particular piece of road. The investigation was split between the Highways Agency and one of the contractors.  The conclusion was that the Highways Agency did not accept the claim. Mr L remained unhappy at the end of the process and so the Independent Complaints Assessor (the ICA), who acts on behalf of the Department for Transport, considered his complaint.

What we found

We partly upheld this complaint.

The splitting of the investigation between the Highways Agency and its contractor meant that the complaint was not handled well. There were a number of problems with the way that the contractor had investigated the complaint. For instance, its appeals procedure did not appear independent and there were errors in correspondence. That caused Mr L confusion, distress and inconvenience.

The Highways Agency did not look to see if there was any CCTV footage available that might have resolved the complaint, and that was a failing in its investigation. It also did not get some, and did not retain other, information useful to its investigation such as whether there were any unscheduled road works being carried out that the sign could have come from. The impact of those failings was that the opportunity to potentially resolve the complaint was lost.

The ICA mistakenly believed that it was the Highways Agency's policy not to use CCTV footage to resolve complaints. It did not identify that the Highways Agency should have looked for relevant CCTV footage as part of its investigation. The Department for Transport accepted responsibility for that, saying that it had not made it sufficiently clear to the ICA how far it should go to satisfy itself whether something is policy or not. Mr L suffered further inconvenience and distress because the complaint was not resolved at the ICA stage.

Putting it right

The Highways Agency and its contractor had already taken some action to improve its complaints processes. At our recommendation the Highways Agency took additional action to ensure that the investigations by its contractors are robust, in particular that it agreed to develop guidance about when it would be appropriate to look for CCTV footage. The Highways Agency also apologised for its, and the contractor's failings and the impact of these on Mr L. It paid Mr L £150 for the confusion, distress and inconvenience that he experienced.

The Department for Transport apologised to Mr L for the ICA's review not picking up the CCTV issue, and agreed to ensure that our findings about the ICA's review are taken into account in its ongoing consideration of how ICA's operate.