Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of his taxi driver licence renewal application. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council and we cannot achieve the outcome Mr X wants.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council took too long to deal with his taxi driver licence renewal application. His licence expired while the Council was dealing with his application and he says this meant he could not work. He wants the Council to refund his application fee and pay him compensation.

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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)
3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
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)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. The Council wrote to Mr X about renewing his licence in September 2023. Mr X submitted his application on 11 January 2024 and paid the fee on 22 January but the Council did not issue his new licence until 16 April 2024.
7. The Council’s policy says it aims “to process all valid renewal applications within 10 working days.” However, because Mr X is also licenced by another local authority the Council had to make enquiries of that local authority before it could complete the renewal. The Council sent its enquiries on 12 January 2024 and received a response on 12 March but on checking the information provided it realised it related to a different person. The Council notified the other local authority of its error on 18 March 2024 and received the correct information about Mr X on 2 April 2024. It then issued Mr X his licence eight working days later.
8. I appreciate Mr X is unhappy about the length of time it took the Council to issue his licence but I have not seen enough evidence of fault to warrant further investigation. The Council had to wait for the other local authority to respond to its enquiries and when it did, it actioned the responses promptly- within 10 working days. This is broadly in line with its policy as the application could not be processed until it had all the necessary information. While it would of course have been better for Mr X if the Council had issued the new licence sooner, we could not reasonably say it should have dealt with the responses more quickly than it did.
9. Further, we would not recommend the Council refunds Mr X’s renewal application fee as the Council has completed the process and issued him a new licence. We also cannot determine how much Mr X may have lost in earnings over the period following the expiry of his licence and would not therefore recommend a remedy for this. Claims for loss of earnings are a matter for the courts.

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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 and we cannot achieve the outcome Mr X wants.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman