Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about council tax for a new build property. Any fault by the Council did not cause Miss X injustice.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained the Council delayed for a year in registering her rented property for council tax. She says she spent significant time and trouble on resolving the matter and the Council now expects her to pay two years’ council tax in one year. She says this is stressful and puts her in financial difficulty. She wants the Council to write off the council tax for 2022/23.

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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:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained.

(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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My assessment

5. Miss X moved into a new build property in June 2022. However, the property was not registered for council tax for several months. Miss X received a council tax bill in April 2023 including council tax for both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 tax years.
6. Miss X says the Council was responsible for this delay. The Council told her it had not received contact from the property’s owner to say the building works had been completed, so it could not have served a completion notice to the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). The VOA decided the property had been completed in June 2022 and therefore the retrospective council tax was due.
7. There is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council. However, in any event, any fault there may have been has not caused Miss X’s injustice, for three reasons:
• It is the VOA, not the Council, that decides when a property is registered from. But for any potential fault, Miss X would still have had to pay the council tax for the 2022-23 tax year.
• It was reasonable for Miss X to expect she would be asked to pay council tax from the date she moved into the property. She had the option, therefore, to put aside some funds for this, despite not knowing exactly how much she would be asked to pay.
• Miss X’s time and trouble in seeking to get the property registered was not directly linked to the Council’s actions. It is a property owner’s responsibility to get a new build property registered for council tax purposes, including contacting the Council to tell it the property is complete.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because her injustice is not due to fault by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman