Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about liability for business rates which the Council is seeking to recover from the complainant. The law prevents us from considering the conduct of the court action the Council took, it is not fault for the Council to recover rates in accordance with the Valuation Office Agency’s rates listing, and the complainant can reasonably take court action if he believes the Council’s demands are wrong.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the Council billing him for a business plot which he does not occupy, and that he was unable to present his case when the Council obtained a liability order from the court.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. We can 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. So, we do not start an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or
• there is another body better placed to consider this complaint.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
5. And 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 and the Council, which included their complaint correspondence.
7. I also considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. As I understand it, the matter at the heart of the complaint is a dispute about the business rating assessment/list for two adjacent properties/plots.
9. The Valuation Office Agency (VOA), part of central government, is responsible for the business rating list. The VOA decides if a property should be rated, the rateable value, and the date each property enters and leaves the list. As the billing authority, the Council is required to recover the rates in accordance with the liability set in the VOAs listing. As such, I can see no fault in the Council seeking to recover the debt in accordance with the current listing.
10. We have no jurisdiction to investigate decisions of the VOA, which has its own complaints procedure and is a government body accountable to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
11. The Council has confirmed that if the VOA amends the listing in response to Mr X’s challenge, it will backdate any business rates accounts to the effective date set by the VOA and will re-bill accordingly, including making refunds for overpaid rates, if appropriate.
12. And in any case, Mr X can ask the courts to set aside the liability order the Council obtained if he believes it is wrong or was based on misleading information. The Ombudsman would normally consider it reasonable to expect a complainant to pursue court action if they think the Council’s demands are wrong, so we would not investigate the complaint for this reason also.
13. Finally, and with reference to paragraph 5 above, we cannot consider any parts of the complaint about the advice a council officer gave to Mr X at court, as this relates to the conduct of court action.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council and, in any case, it is reasonable to expect him to pursue court action if he believes the Council’s demands are wrong. We also cannot investigate what happened in court.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman