Council officials took too long to evict a woman from an allotment site after she had put up an effigy of another plot holder, the ombudsman has found.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council issued the woman with a termination notice six months after officers had a conversation with her about an 'inapproriate decoration'.

The delay meant the eviction came after the woman had already paid a full year's fee for her plot. She claimed the loss of the allotment also impacted her emotional wellbeing and ability to grow food for her family.

The woman made a formal complaint against the council, which she subsequently escalated to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

Following an investigation the ombudsman found that while the council had been entitled to evict the allotment holder – identified as 'Mrs X' – the delay caused 'unnecessary and avoidable distress' and so the authority was at fault.

The council agreed to apologise to the woman, refund her annual fee and pay her £150 to remedy the 'injustice'.

This case was one of a number of recent ombudsman's rulings against the council which were reported to the strategy and resources scrutiny committee as part of a review on corporate complaints.

Committee members were told that the 'decoration' in question was an effigy of another allotment holder.

According to the ombudsman's report, the council visited Mrs X's allotment at the unnamed site in summer 2023, following a complaint from another plot holder. It was found that the decoration had 'distinctive details' which had caused offence to another plot holder.

Mrs X agreed to remove the effigy, but the council decided that she had breached the anti-social behaviour clause in its allotment regulations. The council added Mrs X to a wider investigation into anti-social behaviour at the site. A further complaint against her in November was not substantiated.

In December the council issues Mrs X with an eviction notice, several weeks after her allotment contract had rolled over for another year. The ombudsman found that as the eviction was based solely on the inappropriate decoration, the decision should have been made in a timelier way.

The report states: "There was six months between the council's conversation with Mrs X about the inappropriate decoration and issuing her with the termination notice. In the termination notice, the council said a full investigation had been conducted.

"The council did not write to Mrs X to inform her she was under investigation. Mrs X believed once she had removed the inappropriate decoration, she had remedied the issue. She should have been properly informed. This is fault which caused unnecessary and avoidable distress."

But the ombudsman found that the actual decision to evict, was 'one it was entitled to take, based on the evidence it had gathered, and based on the terms of the tenancy'.

Scrutiny committee chair Dan Jellyman raised concerns over the time and effort the council had spent on this case.

He said: "As councillors we'll all have anti-social behaviour complaints. The council have the time and resources to investigate an offensive decoration and evict someone, yet when we as councillors report proper serious ASB we're told there aren't enough resources. So I think this case raises other questions about how staff time is being managed."

In 2024/25, a total of 32 complaints against the council were escalated to the ombudsman. Just six of these complaints were upheld, with maladministration and injustice being found in four cases.

Scrutiny committee members agreed to look into a randomly-chosen ombudsman's case in further detail as part of their review into complaints.