Summary: Mrs D complained about how the Council has dealt with her payments for collecting garden waste. She says it created a duplicate account and sent her demands for payment despite her already having paid for the collection on the original account. The Ombudsman has investigated and found the Council was at fault but that its apology and offer of a free year’s garden waste collection are satisfactory step to remedy the injustice caused.

The complaint

1. Mrs D complains the Council has created a duplicate account and sent her demands for payment for her garden waste collection despite Mrs D already having paid for the collection on the original account.
2. She has found this frustrating and has spent time complaining to the Council about the problem.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
4. 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’.
5. If we are satisfied with a council’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)
6. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I have reviewed the information provided by Mrs D and the Council.
8. I wrote to Mrs D and the Council with my draft decision and gave them an opportunity to comment. I considered the comments received before making this final decision.

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What I found

What happened

9. Mrs D complained to the Council about receiving invoices and demands for payment for the Council’s garden waste collection service in January 2019. She said this was incorrect as she had already paid her fee for this by direct debit.
10. The Council responded to the complaint two days later. It explained it had mistakenly created a second account for Mrs D and so, although she had paid the fee for the original account, the second had not been paid.
11. The Council acknowledged the error, credited the second account before closing it. It apologised to Mrs D and offered her a year’s collection for free to try to resolve her complaint. It also said it was in the process of changing its system, which it hoped would prevent the issue reoccurring.
12. Mrs D remained dissatisfied following the response, particularly as the Council had not provided her with a guarantee that the error would not happen again. She asked for her complaint to be escalated.
13. The Council reviewed the complaint, before providing a further response in February. It confirmed the error and offered the same remedy.
14. Mrs D decided she would only accept the Council’s offer if it guaranteed that the problem would not happen again. The Council has said it cannot provide this guarantee but could only say it had changed its system to try to prevent it.

Analysis

15. The Council has acknowledged the fault in its system. It has taken appropriate steps to try to put Mrs D back into the position she would have been in had the fault not occurred. Its offer of a year’s free collection service is appropriate to remedy distress caused to Mrs D by its fault.
16. The Council cannot guarantee there will not be a fault in future. However, it has taken reasonable steps to learn from the fault by including Mrs D’s experience in its review of its green waste collection system. It is using this to improve service and prevent reoccurrence of the issue.
17. The offer made by the Council is also sufficient to remedy the frustration caused and time spent by Mrs D to make her complaint.
18. In response to my draft decision Mrs D commented that she had had problems with the payment for the green waste collection service in 2016 and 2017 which she would like to be considered. However, this complaint is late and there are no good reasons for the Ombudsman to exercise discretion to investigate the earlier issues.
19. Mrs D has also said she is concerned that her personal data has been misused to create the duplicate account. This is a matter which would be better considered by the ICO, rather than the Ombudsman, as it was set up for the consideration of complaints about data protection. Consequently, the Ombudsman has not included this in our investigation.

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Final decision

I have completed this investigation to find the Council were at fault but had taken satisfactory steps to remedy the injustice caused.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman