The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Ms Y’s complaint about the Council’s handling of her Council Tax account. We could add nothing further to the Council’s response and an investigation would unlikely achieve anything more for Ms Y.
The complaint
Ms Y complains about the Council’s handling of her Council Tax account. She says the Council incorrectly billed her and didn’t respond to her request for a review.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended) 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: 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 Ms Y and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Ms Y appealed to the Valuation Tribunal (VT) about her Council Tax account. The VT deals with appeals against decisions on council tax liability and council tax support or reduction. The VT considered matters prior to its decision, including the Council’s handing of Ms Y’s account, and therefore we cannot consider this. We will therefore only consider this complaint about the Council’s actions from the VT’s decision.
The VT confirmed that Ms Y owed no further money to the Council, therefore she expected her Council Tax account to reflect this.
Ms Y received further demands for Council Tax, so she contacted the Council about this. Ms Y asked for the Council to review her account and says the Council failed to respond to her.
The Council apologised to Ms Y for not responding earlier. It explained it was dealing with a backlog of mailbox enquiries. The Council reviewed Ms Y’s account and confirmed the outstanding balance happened because of an automation error. It corrected this error and confirmed Ms Y’s account balance was £0.00.
We could add nothing further to the Council’s response and therefore will not investigate this complaint. The Council apologised to Ms Y and corrected the error on her account. We are unlikely to achieve anything further for Ms Y, and an investigation would not be proportionate in this case.
Final decision
We will not investigate Ms Y’s complaint because we could add nothing further to the Council’s response.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman