Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s management of arrears on a commercial property lease. This is because the complaint does not meet the tests in our Assessment Code on how we decide which complaints to investigate.

The complaint

1. The complainant, I will call Mr D, says the Council is allowing a joint tenant to continue to trade and build up rent arrears.
2. He says the matter has exacerbated his medical conditions. He wants the Council to evict the joint tenant and end the lease immediately.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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 may decide not to start an investigation if the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met.

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

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Mr D and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Mr D is a joint tenant of a commercial property. He says the other tenant is the sole owner of the business operating from the commercial property.
7. The Council confirms Mr D is a joint tenant. It says rent arrears started in 2016 and it wrote to the business address about this. Arrangements were made to clear the arrears, but these were broken. In 2019 the Council issued a default notice and referred the matter to its legal team to start the repossession process. The joint tenant contacted the Council to stop this course of action.
8. The Council says it is working with business owners to support them throughout the pandemic. When writing the final response to Mr D, it said the joint tenant was making payments to repay the arrears. And, once restaurants reopen, it will work with the business to sort out a new payment plan once normal trading resumes.
9. From the information I have seen the Council is entitled to write to the business address and to assume the joint tenants will both deal with business matters. It is not the Council’s fault that the joint tenant kept the knowledge of the arrears from Mr D.
10. The Council is also entitled to work with the joint tenant to clear the arrears. We cannot require the Council to evict the joint tenant and repossess the property.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Mr D’s complaint because we are unlikely to find fault in the Council’s actions. Nor can we achieve the outcome Mr D is seeking.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman