Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s decision to limit support under its COVID-19 Additional Relief Fund scheme to businesses in the sectors it considered were worst affected by the pandemic. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains the Council’s COVID-19 Additional Relief Fund (CARF) scheme wrongly excluded businesses in certain sectors. This meant she was not eligible to claim the relief for her business, which she says suffered significantly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. She says the Council’s methodology for targeting the relief was lazy, too simplistic and ignored small local businesses.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect 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 an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Mrs X and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. The Government provided funding through the CARF scheme to help businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic but left it to local authorities to decide which business to support and how to allocate and distribute the funds.
6. The Council decided to support businesses in several sectors by granting relief from their business rates liability for the 2021/22 tax year in bands ranging from 50 to 100%, dependent on the sector. However the Council’s scheme did not provide relief for businesses such as Mrs X’s.
7. Mrs X complained that she was not eligible for the Council’s CARF scheme and the Council considered her complaint as part of an appeal. But the panel noted they could not consider any challenge to the scheme itself and found the Council had properly applied the eligibility criteria in her case. It therefore had no option but to dismiss the appeal.
8. Mrs X remains unhappy with the scheme itself and disagrees with the Council’s decision to target its funding at certain businesses while excluding others. But the funds provided under the scheme were limited and the Council could not therefore support all the businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its policy explains how it reached the decision to support the relevant sectors and this is supported by clear rationale.
9. While Mrs X disagrees with the Council’s decision it is not for us to question its merits and even if we could, we could not say it should have widened the eligibility criteria specifically to include Mrs X’s business as there will be many others which missed out.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman