Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s delay in dealing with his correspondence about a penalty charge notice. The Council explained how Mr X could appeal against the notice and it would have been reasonable for Mr X to follow this process.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mr X, complains the Council delayed in dealing with his correspondence about a PCN. He is also unhappy with the Council’s handling of his complaint. He says the matter has taken a lot of his time and caused him inconvenience for which he would like compensation.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• it is unlikely we would find fault, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

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

3. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a tribunal. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
4. The Traffic Penalty Tribunal considers parking and moving traffic offence appeals for all areas of England outside London.

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How I considered this complaint

5. I reviewed Mr X’s complaint and the Council’s response. I shared my draft decision with Mr X and invited his comments.

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What I found

6. The Council issued Mr X a PCN in 2019. Mr X made representations against the PCN but the Council rejected them on 16 December 2019. The notice of rejection explained that if Mr X wished to challenge the PCN further he would need to appeal to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (TPT) within 28 days.
7. Mr X did not appeal to the TPT. Instead he emailed the Council on 22 December 2019 with further evidence he believed contradicted that used by the Council to uphold the PCN. He complains the Council took until 14 January 2020 to respond to his email and tell him that if he wished to pursue an appeal he would need to follow the procedure set out in its notice of rejection.
8. Mr X emailed the Council back the same day saying that he had mislaid the notice of rejection and asking it to send a copy. The Council responded to this email on 30 January 2020 confirming that Mr X had 28 days to appeal to the TPT if he was not happy with its decision to reject his representations.
9. Mr X emailed the Council again querying if the TPT would automatically refuse his appeal as he was outside the 28 day period; if not then Mr X said he intended to appeal. If his appeal would be automatically refused Mr X asked the Council to alter the date of its notice of rejection so he could appeal. Mr X says the Council’s response misrepresented his comments and simply referred him to the TPT without answering his question. The Council has refused to enter into further correspondence with Mr X and Mr X believes it delayed in dealing with his correspondence on purpose.
10. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. The Council’s notice of rejection set out Mr X’s right to appeal to the TPT and if he disputed the Council’s decision not to cancel the PCN it would have been reasonable for him to use this. Instead he sought to challenge the Council’s decision outside the formal appeals process and this took him beyond the deadline to appeal. This was not the result of fault by the Council and Mr X could not expect an immediate response, particularly given the time of year.
11. If Mr X wanted to know how the TPT would deal with an out of time appeal then he could have contacted the TPT directly. The Council has no control over its handling of an appeal and it is not for it to make assumptions about whether it will consider an appeal made outside the normal time limit.
12. Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council has dealt with his complaint. But it is not a good use of public resources to look at the Council’s complaints handling if we are not going to look at the substantive issue complained about. We will not therefore investigate this issue separately.

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Final decision

13. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it would have been reasonable for Mr X to appeal to the TPT and it is unlikely we would find fault by the Council affecting his right of appeal.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman