70 A woman was unhappy about a large roof terrace which her neighbour had built on an ordinary single-family house. The problem was partly that the roof terrace overlooked the woman’s garden. First the woman complained twice to the local authority, which on both occasions denied that the ­construction contravened the local plan. She subsequently lodged an appeal with the then Nature Protection Board of Appeal. The issue was now whether the appeal deadline of four weeks had been exceeded. If the local authority’s second reply was regarded as an independent decision, she was within the deadline, but the Board of Appeal did not take that view. The discontented neighbour lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman, who submitted a number of questions to the Nature Protection Board of Appeal. In the end, the Board agreed that the deadline had been met and considered the case. The Board annulled the local authority’s decision and asked the local authority to reconsider the case. A local authority wanted to amalgamate two primary and lower secondary schools into one new school. As part of the argumentation, the authority wrote on its website that some parents chose not to send their children to one school because it had a large number of bilingual pupils. A father turned up in person at the Ombudsman’s office in Copenhagen to lodge a complaint about the local authority. He was opposed to the amalgamation and believed that the local authority’s argumentation was wrong, so that the decision was invalid. A lawyer at the Ombudsman’s office spoke to the man and discovered that a decision had not yet been made. The school amalgamation proposal was still in the consultation phase. For this reason alone, the Ombudsman was unable to take up the case. The man was informed that he could return once the local authority had made its decision. Many people lodge a complaint by e-mail, but in principle any method may be used – as long as the Ombudsman understands the complaint. Typically, a citizen turns up five to ten times a week at the Ombudsman’s office in Copenhagen to complain. For a number of years, a ­local authority had granted a severely arthritic man support towards the pur­chase of a so-called mobility vehicle. However, when the man applied for a renew­al of the grant, the local authority rejected his appli­cation. The Ombudsman returned the case to the Social Tribunal, stating that the man was entitled to a better ­explanation of the change in the local ­authority’s practice. The Ombudsman then closed the case, but wrote to the man that he could contact him again if he was not happy with the ­Tribunal’s reply.