Summary: A business owner complained about the way the Council dealt with issues regarding the lease and rent for a business unit he used to occupy, and its refusal to consider his recent further concerns about this matter. But the Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is mainly because it has been made late.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I shall call Mr B, complained about the way the Council set up the lease and rent payments for a commercial unit he previously ran his business from. Mr B felt the Council’s actions contributed to his later difficulties over the lease and rent payments. Mr B was also unhappy about the Council’s recent refusal to investigate these matters and comments it made to his MP.

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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. In particular the Act says 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 an authority has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information Mr B provided with his complaint and his comments in response to my initial views about his case. In addition I took account of information from the Council about its correspondence with Mr B concerning his complaint issues.

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What I found

4. Around 2003 Mr B took on the lease of a business unit at a site the Council was involved in developing. A company the Council had an interest in took ownership of the site. But Mr B said he had dealt directly with the Council when his lease was agreed.
5. Mr B said a few months after he moved into the unit the Council arranged for him to stop paying rent to the company and to pay this instead to a charity which ran another facility on the site.
6. In 2014 the company asked Mr B to vacate his business unit at short notice as they wanted to use it for another purpose. Mr B said as a result he was put under threat of losing his business.
7. Mr B disputed the legality of the company’s actions. But he was unable to obtain a copy of his lease, and he said this exacerbated his difficulties in dealing with the company. However Mr B eventually reached an amicable settlement with the company to relocate his business.
8. But Mr B said during this process it emerged that the charity had not been charging him the correct rent, and this should have included VAT. Mr B suspected the company and the charity had devised this arrangement to avoid paying VAT.
9. In 2015 Mr B complained to the Council about the company’s bullying behaviour and the rent issue. But the Council said it was not responsible for the actions of the charity or company.
10. Mr B then complained to the Ombudsman about these matters. But in 2016 we decided the issues in his case were outside our jurisdiction to consider.
11. Mr B continued to correspond with the Council about his concerns, and in late 2018 he made another complaint to it. In particular Mr B complained the Council had recently lied to his MP in saying the issues from 2014 and 2015 had been resolved. He also felt the Council had unreasonably refused to look into the allegedly fraudulent rent arrangement.
12. In response the Council said it had nothing to add to previous responses given it was not liable for the actions of the company and charity.
13. Mr B then brought his complaint to the Ombudsman. Mr B also said he now wanted to complain about the Council’s part in granting him the original lease and in switching his rent payments to the charity.

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Analysis

14. However we will not investigate matters in Mr B’s case, mainly because his complaint has been made late. In addition part of his complaint relates to issues we have already considered in dealing with his original complaint.
15. In particular, Mr B evidently knew about whatever part the Council had played in granting him a lease and his rent payment arrangements when he first occupied the business until over 15 years ago. In addition he was clearly aware of the problems he felt the Council’s original involvement had caused by 2015 when he was fighting eviction from his unit.
16. In the circumstances I see no reason why Mr B could not have raised these issues in his initial complaints to the Council and Ombudsman in 2015 rather than almost four years later. As a result I have concluded that the restriction on our jurisdiction I refer to in paragraph 2 applies to this part of Mr B’s ccomplaint.
17. Furthermore I am not convinced that there are grounds for us to exercise our discretion about applying this restriction. In particular I consider it is highly unlikely we would be able to carry of a meaningful investigation now into events which happened around 2003.
18. In addition, I do not see we should pursue Mr B’s other complaints about the way the Council has responded to issues he has recently raised about its comments to his MP and its refusal to look into alleged fraud.
19. Despite the fact that Mr B has had recent correspondence with the Council about these concerns, the substantive matters in question still relate to happened in 2014 and 2015. As a result I consider Mr B is complaining about issues which are essentially very similar to those we have already looked at in his case and there is no reason to for us to look into them again.

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Final decision

20. The Ombudsman will not start an investigation of Mr B’s complaint about the way the Council has dealt with issues relating to the lease and rent he paid for a business unit. This is mainly because Mr B has complained late about these issues, and there is no good reason for us exercise discretion and pursue matters now in his case.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman