Summary: Mr C says the Council was at fault for failures its trading standards department made after he complained about a rogue builder. He says these faults caused him and his wife injustice because, as a result, another council was unable to prosecute the builder. The Council was at fault for failures in communication but these did not mean the other council could not prosecute. It decided, independently, that prosecution was not justified. The Council has agreed to apologise and pay Mr and Mrs C £100.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I have called Mr C, say the Council did not communicate with him adequately about his complaint about a rogue builder, Mr B. He says the Council failed to tell him it was not investigating his complaint because he lived in a different council’s area. As a result, he says, he did not know to contact that council about his complaint. This meant, he says, that by the time he found out which council should have investigated, it was too late for that council to take any enforcement action against Mr B.
2. Mr and Mrs C say this caused them injustice. Mr C says he spent hundreds of hours gathering information to send to the Council.
3. Mr C says they want:
1. Compensation for the distress caused.
2. All builders to be regulated by law and be required to prove that they have liability insurance.
3. To know why they were never told that they should have been dealing with another council’s trading standards team.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. 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)
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)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I spoke to Mr C and, using the information I had gathered, I wrote an enquiry letter to the Council. I then considered the Council’s response, its relevant policy and wrote a draft decision using the available information.
7. Mr C 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 should happen

8. Every Council must operate a trading standards department. Referrals to trading standards departments should be made through the Citizens’ Advice Consumer Service (‘CACS’). The CACS should notify the complainant’s home authority of any complaint.
9. CACS sends information to councils in one of two ways:
1. A referral: This generally indicates a breach of criminal legislation or is in some other way significant due to that council’s priorities; and
2. A notification. This usually occurs where there has been a breach of civil litigation.
10. Notifications and referrals are made electronically through a dedicated system. Councils are required to pick up referrals but have discretion as to whether to monitor notifications.
11. Where a referral is made to a complainant’s council, the business’s home council automatically receives a notification.
12. The Ombudsman does not consider Citizens Advice to be acting for and on behalf of the local authority when providing such advice, as this is a discretionary function of councils which the vast majority have chosen to no longer provide, and the service is not commissioned by them. 
13. The Ombudsman cannot generally look into the merits of a complaint against a rogue trader. We can only look into the way a council trading standards department considered a complaint. Council’s have wide discretion as to whether to take action against a particular trader and, if they do, to what extent they should do so.
14. The Ombudsman can generally find fault if there has been delay or if a council has not properly considered whether to take action.
15. If a complainant wants to recover money from a rogue trader, they should consider taking them to court.

What happened

16. In 2017, Mr and Mrs C bought a house in a neighbouring council’s area. They wanted to completely refurbish it and, in 2019, asked several builders to provide quotations. The works were expected to cost £250-£300,000. They chose a builder, Mr B. Mr B began work in summer 2019. Mr C says he later discovered Mr B had provided fake insurance and address details.
17. Mr C says that, on starting work on the house, Mr B illegally disconnected the gas and electricity and carried out substandard work which left the house dangerous and uninhabitable. He says he took money from Mr C for materials but never paid the suppliers. Mr C says Mr B was not VAT registered but charged Mr C for VAT.
18. Mr C says he visited the house after a week and found it in a terrible condition. He says he also found bombmaking literature that led him to believe that Mr B might be a terrorist. He asked Mr B to leave the site. He says that, overall, he is £100,000- £150,000 out of pocket and is still living in rented accommodation.
19. Mr C initially tried to contact Mr B but says he never replied and blocked his number. Mr C then went to the police who told him to go to trading standards which he did, through CACS.
20. Mr C’s house was in another county council’s area. CACS therefore correctly, referred the matter to their council’s trading standards team and also notified the Council’s trading standards team.
21. Due to a communications error with Mr C’s home council, Mr C received no response from them. He then made efforts to move matters along. He complained to CACS who contacted his home council by email and copied in the Council.
22. The Council says it then contacted Mr C. A Council officer, Officer O, told Mr C that the Council was carrying out background checks. Officer O advised Mr C to take civil legal action to recover the money. He was also concerned that the terrorism allegations might mean the police were better placed to investigate.
23. The records show that, for three months, there was a considerable amount of activity. Mr C provided a great deal of information and the Council carried out some enquiries.
24. Thereafter, activity stopped. Mr and Mrs C contacted Officer O twice, in January and June 2020 but received no response. Mr C complained through his MP about the lack of action in July 2020.
25. Mr C had spent a great deal of time gathering information about Mr B which he had sent to Officer O. he complained to CACS which explained that the email to his own council had not arrived and that this was the council that should have investigated his complaint. It apologised to him.
26. Mrs C complained to the Council. She said:
1. CACS had wrongly referred Mr and Mrs C’s complaint to the Council’s Trading Standards team
2. Officer O then contacted Mr and Mrs C in mid-September 2019 and asked them to send information about their dealings with Mr B.
3. Mr and Mrs C had emailed Officer O in January and June 2020 and had received no response.
4. Officer O’s initial request for information and subsequent inactivity had meant Mr and Mrs C had believed the Council was dealing with their concerns about Mr B when, in fact, it should have been the other council that considered investigation. By the time they had found this out, it was too late for the other council to take any action against Mr B.
27. The Council sent a complaint response to Mrs C in August 2020. It said it did not know why it had been copied into the CACS email. It said that, at the time of their complaint, CACS told Mr and Mrs C of the possibility of a criminal prosecution of Mr B. CACS had contacted the anti-terrorism unit and had also contacted the other council’s trading standards team in mid-August 2019. It had copied that council’s trading standards team into the email.
28. Unfortunately, the email had not reached the other trading standards team and, at the time, the Council had not known that the alleged offence took place in the other council’s area. Therefore, a manager had asked Officer O to:
1. make sure that the matter had been referred to the anti-terrorism authorities.
2. To carry out initial enquiries and
3. To contact Mr and Mrs C to get any further information they could provide.
29. Officer O had carried out a lot of work over the next two months but, in October 2019, the team leader had ordered an officer to carry out a review of the case to see if the Council should continue to investigate.
30. In response to the specific complaints made, the Council said:
1. CACS wrongly referred Mr and Mrs C to the Council: The Council did not know why this had happened but was not responsible for CACS’s actions.
2. Officer O’s request for information: As Mr and Mrs C did not live in the Council’s area, the Council should not have contacted them. However, the Council’s records show that they had been told the Council was not carrying out an investigation into their complaint.
3. Officer O asked them to continue to send information: This could have given the impression that the Council was investigating.
4. Officer O’s failure to respond to emails: Officer O should have responded to Mr and Mrs C’s emails.
5. Loss of chance of prosecution: Officers failed to recognize that Mr and Mrs C did not live in the Council area and, had they done so sooner, it was possible that a different trading standards team could have prosecuted Mr B. However, the other council’s trading standards had now decided that this was not a suitable case for prosecution.
31. The Council apologised for any additional distress caused by its failures and the failures of officers. It recommended six actions to remedy its errors:
1. Complete outstanding intelligence gathering.
2. Refer the case to the Leicestershire Police Economic Crime Unit
3. Refer the case to the Government Agency Intelligence Network
4. A reminder to the team leader and reviewing officer that review dates are scheduled and acted on.
5. A change of policy so that intelligence officers do not communicate directly with consumers.
6. A competence and casework review of Officer O.
32. The Council said that all of these had been completed apart from (6) which was ongoing. The Council referred Mr and Mrs C to the Ombudsman if they were not satisfied. Mr and Mrs C complained to the Ombudsman.

Was there fault causing injustice

33. Mr and Mrs C say they were tricked by Mr B and lost a great deal of money. But that was not the Council’s fault. I am investigating allegations of failures in the Council’s processes.
34. The complaint involves a combination of small faults by CACS and two different councils which resulted in a service failure to Mr and Mrs C. The Council can only be responsible for its part in the process.
35. Mr and Mrs C believe that the Council’s errors meant that the other council was unable to prosecute Mr B because, by the time the other council found out about Mr B, over a year had passed since Mr B’s alleged offences and that trading standards department was then unable to investigate, its time limit having been passed.
36. I cannot find that this was the case. The main reason that the other council failed to find out about Mr C’s allegations about Mr B was because of a failure of communication between CACS and that council. The other council has accepted responsibility for that failure.
37. But, in any event, the other council says it had two senior officers review the case when it did find out about it and, using that council’s criteria, its trading standards team found that they would not have prosecuted Mr B in any event. This was for a variety of reasons which had nothing to do with time limits.
38. Further, it is important to note that, even if there had been a prosecution, this would not have resulted in Mr and Mrs C recovering any lost money. Mr and Mrs C are currently considering civil legal action against Mr B.
39. I uphold the Council’s findings about its own fault. It was at fault for the errors it identified in its processes. The Council has taken action to remedy those faults so I do not intend to recommend any service improvements.

Remedy

40. Mr C has made several suggestions of the remedy he wants. He is seeking:
1. Compensation: The Ombudsman does not recommend payments of ‘compensation’. Instead, we sometimes recommend a payment in recognition of the injustice a council’s fault has caused. In this case, it appears it was Mr B, not the Council, that caused Mr and Mrs C distress. Nonetheless, the Council was at fault and this fault did cause some additional distress to them and Mr C spent many hours sending information to the Council which they did not use.

I have therefore recommended a small financial payment from the Council to Mr and Mrs C as an acknowledgment of the distress they suffered and the time they spent researching information about Mr B and sending it to the Council.

2. Legislation: The Ombudsman has no power to require the central government to pass legislation.
3. Information about Council failures: This decision, I believe, explains the Council’s role in these events.

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Agreed action

41. The Council has agreed that within four weeks of the date of this decision, it will write to Mr and Mrs C and apologise for the fault found and pay him £100.

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Final decision

42. I have found the Council at fault. The Council has agreed with my recommendation for a remedy. Therefore, I have closed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman