ABSTRACT
In late 1992 and early 1993, the PO received complaints via three MPs representing constituencies in Kent about the inability of a number of householders to sell their properties because of the Department of Transport’s handling of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) project. Five individual complaints were accepted for investigation, but as it was clear that there were other aggrieved parties, the Ombudsman decided to treat those five cases as specimens for their respective constituencies and to examine them in the context of the department’s handling of the project as a whole.9 This action was close, though not totally analogous, to the kind of administrative audit recommended by the Select Committee in its review of The Powers, Work and Jurisdiction of the Ombudsman,10 a recommendation rejected by government on a number of, arguably thin, grounds.11
