Summary: We cannot investigate this complaint about council tax because it involves court action which started when the Council issued a summons for unpaid council tax. There is also not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s enforcement and recovery action to warrant an investigation. Part of the complaint is late, and there are no good reasons to exercise our discretion and investigate it.

The complaint

1. Mr G says the Council has issued summonses for Council tax and charged him penalties without communicating with him.
2. Mr G says he has been trying to tell the Council to communicate through email for at least ten years now as he cannot access the letters it sends to him. However, it has failed to do so and continues sending him letters.
3. Mr G also says the Council’s communication has been haphazard and has failed to respond to his complaint.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
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)
6. 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 there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating,

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

7. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered information provided by Mr G and the Council.
9. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

10. The law sets out the process for demanding payment of council tax and taking recovery action for unpaid tax. It is not open to a council taxpayer to seek adjustment of the process. In his complaint Mr G refers to seldom being in the UK to deal with post delivered to his address, and he wants the Council to communicate with him by email to avoid him defaulting on his payments.
11. The Council is not responsible for Mr G’s personal circumstances and does not have to adjust its process to accommodate his absence from the country. The law says it must issue a demand for council tax each year or when something changes, and must send it by post. There is no provision in law to send it by email.
12. As a property owner and occupier it is Mr G’s responsibility to ensure he pays council tax as required, either on 1 April each year in one amount, or by the set instalments each month on time. Mr G could achieve this by paying by direct debit or making arrangements to ensure his post is attended to in a timely way.
13. It follows there is not enough evidence of fault in what happened to warrant investigation. It is also the case we cannot investigate the recovery action the Council took because it issued summonses which are the start of court action.
14. Mr G says he has also known for at least ten years now about the Council not communicating with him by email. There is no reason he could not have complained to us sooner, so at least some of his complaint is late, with no good reason for us to consider it now.
15. In cases where we do not investigate the matters in a complaint, we do not separately investigate the Council’s complaint handling process.

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Final decision

16. We will not investigate Mr G’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault to warrant an investigation, we cannot investigate the start of court action in any event, and part of the complaint is late with no good reason to investigate it now.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman