The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of Mr X’s queries about his council tax account. This is because there is insufficient evidence council fault caused Mr X significant injustice.
The complaint
Mr X complains the Council did not provide a proper breakdown of how payments he had made had been allocated to his council tax account. Because of this, Mr X says he lost trust in the Council and delayed making some payments. The Council took recovery action as a result and Mr X considers this is unfair. Mr X also says the Council did not take account of his reduced earnings due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr X wants the additional costs that have been added to his account, after recovery action was taken, to be cancelled.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide any fault has not caused significant injustice to the person who complained (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended) The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a tribunal. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
While I recognise Mr X was dissatisfied with the Council’s responses to his queries, there was a duty on him to maintain his council tax payments. The Council was entitled to take recovery action when he did not do this and so I do not consider the added costs Mr X complains about arose from Council fault.
If Mr X continues to dispute the amount of council tax he owes, he can appeal against the Council’s decision on his liability to the Valuation Tribunal (VT). This is the independent body which specifically deals with such disputes, and it is reasonable therefore to expect Mr X to use this appeal right.
In its complaint responses to Mr X, the Council said that during the initial stages of the pandemic, it withdrew a summons it had issued to him and placed a hold on recovery action. It also advised Mr X about council tax reduction, but it says it never received an application for this from Mr X. I have seen insufficient evidence of fault by the Council in this regard to warrant our involvement.
For these reasons, we will not investigate.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of Council fault causing an injustice to Mr X.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman