Summary: Ms A complained about the Councils decision to withdraw the Council Tax support it was providing her with. The Ombudsman will not exercise his discretion to investigate this complaint. This is because disputes over the council tax support payment are best considered in court or tribunal and the complaint is out of time.

The complaint

1. Ms A complained about :
• the Council’s decision to withdraw the Council Tax support it was providing her with.
• the Council’s lack of responses to her requests for information about her Council Tax and benefits accounts.
• the Council not informing her of her appeal rights.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe it would be reasonable for the person to ask for a council review or appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
3. The Valuation Tribunal deals with appeals against decisions on council tax liability and council tax support or reduction.
4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a tribunal. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
5. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by Ms A. She had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

Background

7. Ms A applied to the Council for a backdated council tax support.
8. The Council awarded the backdated council tax support to Ms A but it withdrew the award later because of an issue with Universal Credit payment.
9. Ms A has disputed her attachment of benefit for the liability order from November 2013. She also disputed 5 court summonses the Council issued for Ms A’s 2002 council tax bill.
10. The Council confirmed that it received payments to clear the 2013 order. It also said that it allocated any additional payment made by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to the balance for the 2015/2016 bill.
11. Ms A disagrees and says the Council owes her money because it based its decision on wrong information from DWP.
12. The Councils said that it can only rely on the information available to it, and if there are errors in the figures DWP holds than Ms A has to resolve it with the DWP.
13. Ms A remains dissatisfied and has contacted her MP to act on her behalf. She has also asked for support at the Citizens Advice Bureau.
14. The Council responded to the MP and explained the correspondence it had with Ms A. It also said that it does not consider council tax matters under its complaints procedure because of the appeal rights to the Tribunal.

Assessment

15. If someone disagrees with a housing benefit decision they can ask for a review or appeal to the tribunal. If they have a review, and are unhappy with the decision, they can then appeal to the tribunal. The law says people should appeal within one month of the date of the decision they think is wrong.
16. If Ms A disagreed with her council tax bill or her benefits award she should have used her appeal right under the relevant legislation.
17. The matters that Ms A complained about happened more than 12 months ago, and I see no good reasons why we should use our discretion to disapply the time limit mentioned in paragraph four.

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Final decision

18. The Ombudsman will not exercise his discretion to investigate this complaint. This is because disputes over the council tax support payment are best considered in court or tribunal and the complaint is out of time.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman