Summary: Mrs X complains the Council has not dealt properly with enforcement action relating to Council Tax debt. The Council’s enforcement agents did not communicate with Mrs X properly. Mrs X suffered financial loss due to charges applied for an unnecessary enforcement agent visit. The Council should apologise to Mrs X and refund her £445.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mrs X, complains the Council has not dealt properly with enforcement action regarding a Council Tax debt because she has been wrongly charged for an enforcement agent visit.
2. Mrs X says she has suffered financial loss.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I spoke to Mrs X about his complaint and considered documents she provided. I made enquiries of the Council and considered its response and the supporting documents it provided.
6. Mrs X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

What happened?

7. This is a brief chronology of key events. It does not contain everything I reviewed during my investigation.
8. Mrs X was in arrears to the Council regarding Council Tax payments. The Council instructed an Enforcement Agent (EA) to recover the debt.
9. Mrs X entered into a payment plan and made three payments in November, 2023, December 2023 and January 2024. Mrs X missed paying the instalment due in February 2024.
10. The EA sent a final reminder to Mrs X on 28 February 2024 saying it would send an enforcement agent to her home if she did not arrange payment. It sent Mrs X a text message on 4 March asked her to contact them about payment.
11. Mrs X agrees she first unsuccessfully attempted to contact the EA on 11 March 2024.
12. On 15 March 2024 the EA actually visited Mrs X’s home and charges totalling £445 were added to her debt.
13. Mrs X complained to the EA. The EA did not uphold her complaint.

Analysis

14. Neither the February letter or the March text message sent to Mrs X by the EA contained any deadline by which contact needed to be made.
15. The 4 March text message was sent to Mrs X at 2.30pm. The EA allocated Mrs X’s account to an enforcement officer on 5 March. The EA therefore gave Mrs X only two and a half hours until the end of the working day at 5pm to respond to it, before it escalated its actions..
16. Mrs X tried to contact the EA four days before the enforcement visit was actually made. Call logs and text messages from Mrs X to the EA show Mrs X had attempted to call multiple times, leave messages and had sent an email about her account, but had not received any reply.
17. The EA replied to Mrs X by text message on 15 March saying it would call back later. It then said it would call back on the following Monday instead.
18. The Council’s website says, “When the Enforcement Agent visits in person, a fee of £235.00 is incurred and if the amount owing is more than £1,500 a 7.5% charge will be added for every £1.00 over £1,500. “
19. The EA’s final complaint response to Mrs X said, “the fees were applied correctly on your case, given your delay in making contact which meant it was too late to avoid further action, I do acknowledge that when you did make attempts to contact us, it was made more difficult due to our particularly busy period, meaning that our phone lines and queue times were busier and longer than normal.”
20. The EA agreed a payment plan with Mrs X after it had made the enforcement visit and applied charges to her account. On the balance of probabilities, it would have done this without applying further charges if it had responded to Mrs X’s attempts to contact it before the enforcement visit was made.
21. I therefore do not agree with the Council and EA that it was too late to avoid further action. Mrs X had attempted to make contact with the EA. Instead of communicating with her about her account, it went ahead with an enforcement visit instead. This is fault by the Council. Mrs X suffered financial loss as a result of charges totalling £445 being unnecessarily added to her account.

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Recommended action

22. To remedy the outstanding injustice caused by the fault I have identified, the Council should take the following action within 4 weeks of my final decision:
• Apologise to Mrs X for the fault found. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The organisation should consider this guidance in making the apology I have recommended in my findings.
• Withdraw the £445 charges applied to Mrs X’s account.
• Work with the Enforcement Agent to review its communications policy and practices, to ensure contact from clients is acknowledged and responded to appropriately at the earliest opportunity and to ensure that chargeable actions generating fees are not unnecessarily prioritised.
23. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

24. I have found fault by the Council, which caused injustice to Mrs X. I have now completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman