Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council sending council tax reminder letters to Mr X. This is because there is insufficient remaining injustice to Mr X, or to Ms X who was dealing with the matter on Mr X’s behalf, to warrant our involvement.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council sent him reminder letters for missed council tax payments, when in fact, he had made the payments by standing order. Mr X’s daughter who was dealing with the matter on Mr X’s behalf, complains the Council blamed her for the problem. Mr X also complains about how the Council referred to his daughter, in an internal email. Mr and Ms X have been caused upset and worry by how the Council has dealt with these issues.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Ombudsman investigates 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 may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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Background

5. The Council has acknowledged that Mr X did not miss any council tax payments and that the problem arose as the payments he had made were not allocated to his account. The Council has explained this happened due to an issue with the number of characters transferred over from the bank reference, which meant the payment was not automatically linked up to Mr X’s account.
6. The Council apologised to Mr and Ms X for any distress it had caused. It acknowledged that Mr and Ms X may have felt the issuing of reminder notices was excessive. It explained though its duty to ensure unpaid council tax is collected and when the reminder notices were sent out, it appeared payments had been missed, as the issue with the bank reference had not by then been identified.
7. Mr X is also unhappy that a Council officer referred to his daughter in an email as ‘she’ and ‘her’ instead of referring to her by her name. The Council has acknowledged that this was inappropriate and has apologised for any upset this caused.

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My assessment

8. The Council has apologised for the distress caused but has explained why reminder letters were sent out. It has also apologised for the tone and words used in the internal email.
9. While I recognise Mr and Ms X remain unhappy, I do not consider the remaining injustice to them warrants any further involvement by us. We cannot add to what the Council has said or achieve any further outcome for Mr and Ms X.
10. For these reasons, we will not investigate.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mr and Ms X’s complaints because there is insufficient remaining injustice caused to them and we cannot add to what the Council has already said.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman