Ms A complained about the Council taking legal action for council tax (CT) arrears. She also referred to the Council’s lack of response to her emails querying this and raising a possible overpayment of CT the previous year. Ms A, who has autism, had mentioned this in one of her emails to the Council in July 2024. Ms A said that getting threatening letters month after month while the Council was ignoring her had made her anxious.
The Ombudsman found that in previous years the Council had to an extent taken into account Ms A’s autism and made adjustments to its CT service. However, the Ombudsman noted that there were opportunities for the Council to have done more in terms of meeting Ms A’s need, including when it came to more recent communication with her. The Ombudsman considered that there were shortcomings here. The Ombudsman was critical that the Council had not responded in a timely manner to Ms A’s emails. The Ombudsman noted that the Council had previously apologised for this and agreed that if she maintained the CT payment arrangement it would waive the 2024 court cost that Ms A had incurred.
As part of an early resolution settlement the Council also agreed that it would provide Ms A with a CT statement so she had a clear picture of her CT liability for 2023/2024; that it would apologise again for its delayed response and set out its position concerning a further waiving of court costs for 2023. The Council in conjunction with its Equality Officer would also see if there were additional points of learning from Ms A’s case in terms of communication/reasonable adjustments.