Nottingham City Council (23 008 795)
Category : Benefits and tax > Other
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 09 Oct 2023
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Business rates payments because there is no evidence of fault by the Council.
The complaint
- Mr X complains that he was not told of an earlier Business rates debt and now has budgeting problems.
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:
- there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
- any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
- any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
- we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
- further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mr X is liable for Business rates on a property. He understood that he did not have to pay Business rates for a period during covid lockdown, However, he says that he was not told when his payments started again. As a result, the Council took a payment towards arears from his Direct Debit in 2023.
- The Council says that bills were issued to him each year identifying the Business rates owed. It says that no payments were made and a debt of £963 existed. This was taken out of Mr X’s direct debit in 2023 which Mr X had not expected.
- The Ombudsman could not reach any satisfactory conclusion as to whether Business rates bills were received by Mr X. The Council has offered to transfer the payments made in 2023 towards the liability for this year but this would still leave Mr X in debt for the previous year. There appears no dispute as to liability so Mr X will have to pay the total amount owed.
- There are no grounds therefore for the Ombudsman to investigate this complaint.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman