Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint about a charge for late and non-payment of council tax. There is no evidence of fault by the council in issuing the summons. We cannot consider the court’s judgment in respect of the summons.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to here as Ms X, says the Council has unfairly taken out a summons relating to late payment of council tax and charged her £67 costs as a result. She says the Council’s own website was to blame.

Back to top

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 is unlikely we would find fault (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
3. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

4. I considered the information provided by Ms X and the Council’s response to her complaint.

Back to top

What I found

5. Ms X paid her council tax once a month via the Council’s website using a debit card.
6. The Council requires such payments to be made by the first of each month. Its policy is to send two reminders, with the third late payment or a non-payment resulting in a summons.
7. Ms X’s payments were not taken immediately and showed as “pending”. She was told by her bank the payment would take up to seven days to clear.
8. Ms X received a summons and after speaking to the Council, realised two payments had not been made.
9. She offered to pay the shortfall but the Council asked her to pay £67 costs as these had been incurred due to the summons, which had been issued following the late payment under its policy.
10. Ms X says the missing payments were due to a fault with the Council website.
11. The Council responds that every payment of the 19/20 tax year has been late and that Ms X should have got in touch when she received bills and two reminders showing this.
12. Ms X told us that she ignored the reminders because she believed she had paid the amounts required, having entered them into the Council’s website.
13. She also tried to set up an account to monitor her council tax situation. She says the account did not alert her to sums owing.
14. At the time of the complaint response almost three hundred pounds were still owing.
15. There is no evidence the website was not working properly.
16. Ms X was aware that payments made through the site could take up to seven days to clear.
17. There is no fault by the Council which has followed its policy of issuing a summons for late or non-payments.
18. The court has confirmed the arrears and costs in respect of this summons and we cannot consider a court judgment.

Back to top

Final decision

19. I will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is no fault by the Council in issuing the summons and we cannot look at the court’s decision.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman