The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s decision to pass on the council tax debt to an enforcement agency. This is because it would not be a good use of public money to do so.
The complaint
Mr X complains the Council passed his debt on to an enforcement agent when he tried to pay it over the telephone.
Mr X alleges poor treatment and discrimination due to financial difficulty and vulnerability and would like the extra charges to be taken off his account.
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, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the Mr X and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
In March 2025 Mr X called the Council to take off a charge on his account. The Council refused and in April passed the debt on to enforcement agents.
Mr X made a complaint about the phone call saying he was not called back as requested and felt the Council dismissed his offer to pay the outstanding amount without the charges.
The Council had written to Mr X in August 2024 informing him further charges would not be removed from his account following additional recovery action. Mr X had not made a payment since December 2024.
We will not investigate this complaint. We will not be likely to hold the Council responsible for the injustice caused to Mr X, and it would be a disproportionate use of public money for us to investigate.
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 Mr X’s complaint because it would not be proportionate of us to do so.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman