Mrs H complained to the Ombudsman that Vale of Glamorgan Council had failed to process her claim for Council Tax Reduction sent to it in January 2021. She also complained that the Council had failed to consider her Section 13A (of the Local Government and Finance Act 1992) claim for Discretionary Council Tax Reduction for over a year and refused to backdate the Council Tax Reduction claim to the beginning of April 2021.
The Ombudsman found that the Council maintained it did not receive an application for Council Tax Reduction but did not process Mrs H’s Section13A Discretionary Council Tax Reduction claim until after Mrs H complained in May 2022. Had the claim been processed within the Council’s policy timescales Mrs H would have been notified sooner that the Council Tax Reduction application was not received and would therefore have likely resubmitted the application by June 2021 allowing the Council to backdate any reduction to April 2021.
The Ombudsman sought and gained the Council’s agreement to provide Mrs H with an apology for the delay in processing the Discretionary Council Tax Reduction claim and to process Mrs H’s Council Tax Reduction as though it was received no later than June 2021, thereby backdating the reduction relief to the period encompassing 1 April 2021 to 28 September2021.