Poor handling of complaint about mine shaft searches

What happened

The property owners lived in an area historically used for coal mining. The organisation responsible for providing mining search reports at the relevant time was the NCB. The NCB no longer exists and, when it did, was not an organisation that we were able to look at. Therefore, our investigation looked at the actions of the Coal Authority.

The mining search provided by the NCB to property A in 1980 stated 'the property is clear of disused mine shafts and … as shown on our records'. The owner of property B said that mining searches on the property were carried out in 1974 when they purchased the property and in 1984 when the property was re-mortgaged. Owners of property C believed a pre-purchase mining search was carried out on their property in 1975.

In 2011, as part of the Coal Authority's ongoing mine shaft inspection programme, it wrote to the property owners saying 'your house is close to the recorded position of an old mine shaft' and asking for permission to inspect them. The map it attached showed three mine shafts, one on each property. That was the first any of the property owners had heard about a mine shaft being located on their property.

The inspection took place and the property owners wanted compensation and explanations. They initially approached us when the Coal Authority had simply told them it was too late to make a negligence claim (their purchases had taken place in the 1970s and 1980). We asked the Coal Authority to properly consider and respond to the complaint. The property owners returned to us because they were not happy with the Coal Authority's subsequent response.

What we found

As part of our investigation we asked the Coal Authority and the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to work out where the relevant responsibilities and liabilities of the NCB passed to. Both organisations were satisfied that it was DECC (although it remains the Coal Authority's responsibility to consider specific concerns raised with it in relation to past and present coal mining operations and issuing mining search reports).

We found that the Coal Authority had not handled the complaint well. It had not worked out which organisation was responsible for any previous errors by the NCB, and it had not made it clear to the property owners that, for it to respond to their specific queries, it needed certain information from them (information it did not have itself). The property owners' journey to get to a point at which their concerns were dealt with was therefore delayed, which caused them unnecessary worry and inconvenience.

Putting it right

As a personal remedy, the Coal Authority accepted our recommendations. It apologised to the property owners for its failures in complaint handling and made a £500 payment to each of them for the impact of the poor complaint handling. It also wrote to them confirming the transfer of the NCB's liability and responsibility to DECC and set out what information the property owners needed to provide in order for the Coal Authority to consider their specific circumstances. It confirmed that, if the complainants did that, it would consider and respond to them.

The Coal Authority had made changes to improve its complaints process so we did not make any recommendations in relation to service improvement.