Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of her Council Tax account. This is because any fault has not caused a significant enough injustice to justify our involvement.

The complaint

1. Ms X complained the Council mistakenly cancelled her direct debit, resulting in her accruing debt. She said the Council failed to inform her of this error and did not respond to her repeated attempts to address the issue.
2. Ms X said the administrative burden of chasing the Council has caused her avoidable distress and raised concerns about the debt's impact on her credit rating. She wants the Council to fully or partially write off the debt, stressing that the financial strain resulted from the Council's error, not her actions.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

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 a significant enough injustice 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

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. The Council informed Ms X her Council Tax account was in credit, and no direct debit payments were taken. However, it then closed her account in error.
6. Ms X’s attempts to address the issue went unanswered due to a system upgrade, which the Council said was frustrating as it could not respond to enquiries during this time.
7. Payment notices were automatically sent. When Ms X said she wasn’t happy with the proposed arrangements, the Council cancelled them, leaving the debt unresolved. The Council advised Ms X to arrange payment to avoid recovery actions and additional charges.
8. The Council acknowledged Ms X’s account was closed in error and it also acknowledged it did not respond to her enquiries again due to no fault of her own.
9. Ms X asked the Council to remedy the injustice and partially or fully write off the debt. She said she is worried the debt will negatively impact her credit rating.
10. In this case, Ms X is not in a worse financial position than she was before the Council’s error occurred. She said she was unaware the Council cancelled the direct debit which means there is no good reason why she should not have expected further instalments to be taken from her account. No enforcement actions have been taken, meaning she has not incurred any additional charges yet. Furthermore, according to the Council’s guidance on its website regarding Council Tax recovery, such recovery actions do not impact a person’s credit score. Therefore, we will not investigate this complaint as Ms X’s injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement and our further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because any fault has not caused a significant enough injustice to justify our involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman