The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council pursuing an unpaid parking penalty which was registered to his address. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.
The complaint
Mr X complained about the Council issuing letters and engaging enforcement agents to pursue an unpaid parking penalty for a vehicle registered to his home address. He says he was never the owner of the vehicle and that the Council made a mistake in taking action against his address.
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: there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered the information provided by the complainant and the Council’s responses.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council issued a parking penalty (PCN) in 2022 for a parking offence and sent the notice to the address provided by the DVLA for the reregistered keeper. The vehicle keeper replied in early 2023 and stated that he wished to challenge the notice. However, he did not pursue an appeal and the statutory enforcement process continued to the County Court where the Council obtained a warrant which was passed to enforcement agents to recover the unpaid penalty and costs.
The address provided by the DVLA was Mr X’s address but he says he was not the vehicles owner and the correspondence was issued to a previous occupant. Because the vehicle owner had given no other address details the enforcement agents visited Mr X's home and left notices saying they would distrain on property if the payment was not received.
Mr X was concerned and informed the agents that he was not the owner of the vehicle or responsible for the penalty. The agents accepted his statements and the Council subsequently cancelled the PCN and apologised to Mr X. He says its actions were wrong and that he was falsely accused of not paying a penalty.
The Council followed the statutory enforcement procedure and issued the notices to the correct party at the correct address at the time of issue. The Council did not pursue Mr X for the debt but only the vehicle’s registered keeper at an address which he had registered with the DVLA and from which he had replied to correspondence. There is no evidence that the recovery action was directed at Mr X but only the vehicle owner.
The Council was required to follow the enforcement procedure and the owner of the vehicle should have updated the Council about any change of address once it proceeded to court action.
The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint about the Council pursuing an unpaid parking penalty which was registered to his address. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman