Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council issuing a court summons to recover unpaid council tax. We cannot investigate the start of court action, and there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s actions before issuing the court summons to justify us investigating.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council wrongly issued a court summons to recover unpaid council tax. He says he had disputed the amount owed and believes the Council should have paused recovery while it considered his concerns.
2. Mr X says the Council’s actions caused him stress and he had to pay £117.50 summons costs that he disagrees with. He is also dissatisfied with how the Council handled his complaint about this.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
5. 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

6. I considered information provided by Mr X.
7. I also considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. The exclusion in paragraph 5 means we cannot investigate the Council’s decision to issue a court summons. However, we can consider whether any earlier fault by the Council led to an injustice to Mr X, such as Mr X receiving the summons and associated costs.
9. The Council sent Mr X a council tax bill. When he did not pay, it issued a reminder letter giving him seven days to bring his account up to date. The letter explained that if he did not pay, the Council might issue a court summons.
10. 11 days later, Mr X emailed the Council to dispute part of the bill and asked it to revise the amount. The Council’s automatic reply said it would respond within four to six weeks. Mr X did not pay the bill, and the Council issued a court summons.
11. The Council has since accepted Mr X’s claim that he was not liable for part of the bill. However, it has refused to refund the court summons costs. Mr X says this is unfair because the Council should have paused recovery once he disputed his liability.
12. The general presumption is that council tax should be paid in line with the bill. If a council tax account goes into credit as a result of an overpayment the taxpayer may ask for the money back. If they do not ask, the council can credit it against any other council tax liability of the person.
13. The Council sent Mr X a bill it believed was correct. Mr X neither paid that bill nor did he contact the Council within seven days as set out in the reminder. Therefore, I do not consider there is any fault by the Council on these points.
14. The Council’s automatic response told Mr X that it would not respond to his email for four to six weeks. That put Mr X on notice there would be a delay in responding to his query. There is no evidence to suggest the Council indicated that recovery action would stop during that period. So it would have been reasonable for Mr X to expect the normal recovery process to continue. Therefore, I do not consider there is enough evidence of fault in the Council’s actions before the summons to justify us investigating.
15. Mr X also complains about the Council’s handling of his complaint. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue. As we are not investigating the substantive issue, I will also not investigate the Council’s handling of Mr X’s complaint.

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Final decision

16. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because we are excluded from investigating the Council’s decision to issue a court summons, and there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s earlier actions to justify us investigating. It would be disproportionate to investigate the Council’s complaint-handling in isolation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman