Summary: We have discontinued our investigation of this complaint, about the misallocation of a council tax payment and its consequences. This is because we do not consider the complainant suffered a significant injustice as a result.

The complaint

1. I will refer to the complainant as Mr K.
2. Mr K complains the Council misallocated a council tax payment he had made, which led to it issuing a summons. He then made the payment again in response to the summons, before realising he had already paid. Although the Council eventually accepted he had paid twice and refunded the overpayment, Mr K says this took significant effort on his part over several months. He therefore considers he is due a financial remedy to recognise this.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate 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 continue an investigation if we decide any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I reviewed Mr K’s correspondence with the Council, and asked the Council to clarify several relevant points.

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What I found

5. On 9 March 2023, the Council issued Mr K’s council tax bill for tax year 2023/24. The bill required Mr K to may ten monthly payments, with the first being due on 1 April.
6. Having received no payment from Mr K, the Council issued a reminder on 20 April. This warned Mr K of the possible legal consequences of non-payment, including that he would lose his right to pay by instalments.
7. On 24 April, Mr K made a payment to the Council over the phone. The Council says it appears Mr K had intended this to cover the instalments for both April and May, although it was marginally less (22p) than the required amount.
8. However, the Council has explained the council tax account reference number, which the payment was recorded against, was missing one character. It also says, at that time, it was necessary to select the relevant geographical area when making payments (the Council was formed in 2021 from the merger of three smaller authorities, and was still using a legacy council tax system), but Mr K unfortunately selected the wrong area.
9. For these reasons, Mr K’s payment was not initially allocated to his council tax account; and consequently, on 31 May, the Council issued a court summons to Mr K for non-payment of his April and May instalments. The summons explained the full year’s tax was now due, and added a further £100 in court costs.
10. Mr K phoned the Council’s helpline on 9 June. He explained he had made a payment on 24 April, and provided a screenshot of his bank account to support this. He said he had also made a further, duplicate payment for April and May (this time for the correct amount). The Council put a stop on recovery action while it investigated his original payment.
11. The Council withdrew the summons on 16 June, and issued Mr K a revised bill showing the receipt of his second payment, but not his original payment. After further investigation, the Council located the original payment, and issued another revised bill reflecting this on 21 September.
12. On 26 September, Mr K submitted a stage 1 complaint to the Council, saying it had taken him “endless phone calls” and in-person visits to the Council’s offices, over a period of “4 months”, to obtain a refund for his overpayment. The Council responded on 8 November, acknowledging the amount of time it had taken to identify and correctly allocate his original payment, and apologising for the inconvenience Mr K had suffered because of this.
13. Mr K submitted a stage 2 complaint on 16 November, requesting that he be compensated for the time he had spent in resolving the matter, but the Council replied on 14 December, stating it was satisfied it had dealt with his complaint appropriately, and signposting Mr K to the Ombudsman if he wished to pursue his complaint further.
14. Mr K complained to the Ombudsman on 12 January 2024.

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Legislative background

15. The Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 cover both the way councils collect payments of council tax and the way councils can recover council tax debt. The Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 and associated regulations cover the way enforcement agents may recover debts.
16. The council tax bill for the year is due on 1 April. A council will usually collect payment through monthly instalments. If the liable person misses any instalment, the council will send them a reminder. If a payment is still not made or a further payment missed, then the entire outstanding balance will be due (that is the full amount for the rest of the year).
17. To use the various powers available to it to recover unpaid council tax, a council must apply to a magistrate’s court for a liability order against those it believes are liable. Once a council has a liability order it can take recovery action.
18. A liability order gives a council the legal power to take enforcement action to collect the council tax and court costs owed. The most commonly used powers are asking for deductions from benefits, getting an attachment of earnings (this means deductions are taken directly from earnings by an employer and passed to the council) or using enforcement agents. The council can decide which recovery method to use but it can only use one method for one liability order at one time.

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Analysis

19. There are, essentially, two points to Mr K’s complaint: the unnecessary issue of a summons, which he says caused him stress; and the Council’s delay in providing him a refund, which he says he went to significant time and effort to pursue.
20. With regard to the first point, the Council has explained it was unable to allocate Mr K’s original payment when he made it, because he had selected the wrong geographical area when making the payment, and because it had the wrong reference number.
21. The Council says it resolved the geographical error by 15 May, which was before it issued the summons. Therefore, even accepting this was Mr K’s own error, it should not have been a causal factor in the issue of summons.
22. Unfortunately the payment then remained unallocated because of the error in the reference number. It is still unclear to me how this came about. I note the Council does not say it was Mr K who made this error, and so it could be inferred it was a mistake by a council officer instead. I am not in a position to draw a conclusion on this point.
23. Turning to the delay in providing the refund, Mr K has referred to this taking ‘four to five months’ for the Council to process; in fact it was closer to three months. Either way, I accept this is longer than it ideally should have taken. Again though, the root cause of this appears to have been the error in the reference number, which meant it took the Council some time to locate it.
24. Therefore, it is also possible the Council was at fault in some respect in this matter.
25. Ultimately though, I do not consider further investigation is warranted here. I appreciate Mr K suffered some distress from receiving the summons, but the summons was then quickly withdrawn when he contacted the Council, ending the threat of legal action. And, especially given he had made the original payment manually, it is difficult to understand how he could have failed to appreciate, at that time, there had been some error.
26. For the same reason, I do not consider it was necessary for Mr K to make a duplicate payment. He should have been aware he had already paid, and could simply have provided the Council with evidence to show this. Had Mr K done so there would have been no refund necessary, and he would not have needed to spend his time pursuing the Council for one.
27. Taking these points together, therefore, while I am unable to conclude the Council was at fault, even if could, I am not persuaded Mr K would have suffered such a significant injustice that any financial remedy is warranted. He was not subject to legal action or any additional fees, and while he was out of pocket for a period of time, this was the result of his own decision to make a duplicate payment.

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Final decision

28. I have discontinued my investigation.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman