The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council pursuing him for unpaid licence fees for his shop premises. There is not enough evidence of fault by the Council being the cause of Mr X accruing any arrears to warrant investigation.
The complaint
Mr X runs a shop which used to be licenced to sell alcohol. He decided to stop selling alcohol about several years ago. Mr X stopped paying the annual licence renewal fee after he says he received advice from a licensing officer to do so.
Mr X complains the Council is wrongly charging his business for the annual alcohol sale licence fees from 2017 to 2021.
The payment being sought by the Council is £780. Mr X says the Council’s formal ‘letter before action’ pursuing the sum has caused him stress, fear, worry and anxiety. He wants the Council to cancel all the licence charges, make the rules clearer for licensees, properly train its officers to give the correct advice, recognise its wrong advice has serious financial consequences, and apologise for the threat of court action and for the worry and distress this caused.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by Mr X and the Council, and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Licensing Act 2003 says a licensing authority must suspend the licence of a premises licence holder who does not pay their annual fee. A licensing authority cannot revoke someone’s licence if they have not paid the annual fee; they can only suspend it. If a licence holder wishes to stop paying the annual fee to their licensing authority, they must write to it to cancel the licence.
Mr X says an officer told him several years ago that he could simply stop paying the fee if he decided not to sell alcohol. Mr X says he received the Council’s yearly invoices for the licence fee but did not believe he needed to respond, based on the earlier advice he says he received from the Council’s officer. We cannot make a finding on what Mr X was told several years ago by that licensing officer. We could not now determine whether any of the advice given then was fault. There is also no evidence we could seek which would enable us to make a finding.
The Council says various licensing officers have been in contact with Mr X. A deputy licensing officer delivered a suspension notice to the premises in September 2015. A different deputy licensing officer delivered another suspension notice in September 2017. The Council says the notice advised him: ‘This suspension notice still applies to your business and you are liable for the annual fee to include any arrears.’
Mr X has confirmed he also received the Council’s annual invoices for his licence fee. The Council says that up to 2019, its accompanying letter advised: ‘… the amount is payable unless the licence/certificate has been cancelled, surrendered or revoked by the Licensing Authority’.
This information from 2015 onwards should have been sufficient to make Mr X aware that he would have an ongoing liability for the annual fee if he did not cancel his licence and it only remained suspended. There is not enough evidence here that the Council was at fault in not advising Mr X he needed to pay the licence fee while his licence was suspended.
Officers visited Mr X’s premises in May 2022 as part of a wider licensing campaign. Mr X says another licensing officer told him during the visit that unless he wanted to start selling alcohol again, he would not have to pay anything. The Council disputes this. It says the deputy licensing officer discussed with Mr X whether it was worth him keeping the suspended premises licence should he wish to sell the business in the future, and officer gave advice about cancelling the premises licence due to the fact the annual fees would continue to accrue. But we do not need to make a finding on the advice given at this visis. This is because the Council has removed that 2021 fee from the arrears amount it believes Mr X owes after he cancelled his licence. So there is no significant injustice stemming from the advice about his licence Mr X received in May 2022 Mr X may say that if the Council wished to pursue his non-payment of the licence fees, it should have done so sooner, to prevent the amount getting so large. But the Council invoiced him for the fee each year. Councils also have a wider public duty to protect the funds they manage from the public purse. It is for councils to determine when a debt it considers is owed reaches a sum justifying the use of those public funds to start recovery action. Councils are entitled to balance the cost to the public purse of that action against the size of the debt involved.
After two warning letters, the Council has served Mr X with a ‘letter before action’ for the licence fee sum it considers Mr X owes. If Mr X believes he is not liable for this sum, he could decide to not pay it, wait for the Council to put the matter before a court, and present his defence. Mr X may wish to take independent legal advice to protect his and his business’ position before deciding how he wants to respond to any court action against him by the Council.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council being the cause of any licence fee arrears to warrant us investigating.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman