Summary: Mr X complained that the Council failed to ensure another council’s parking enforcement team, acting on its behalf, dealt fairly with a parking ticket. He considered this caused him an injustice as he had nowhere to turn when he considered that the way that the enforcement team dealt with his challenges to the parking ticket, was unfair. I do not consider the Council was at fault.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained that:

• The Council failed to effectively intervene to ensure the enforcement of a parking ticket was fairly administered.
• He considered this caused him an injustice as he was left to fight what he considered to be an unfair parking ticket.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in the decision making, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
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. If we are satisfied with an organisation’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

5. I spoke with Mr X.
6. I made enquires of the Council and considered the relevant law and guidance.
7. Mr X 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

Relevant law and guidance

8. There is an agency agreement in place between the Council and Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, (“the borough council”), for civil parking enforcement. Surrey County Council is the Traffic Authority for roads within the county of Surrey. Under the terms of the agreement, the County Council discharges certain functions to the borough council. These functions include the administration of residents parking schemes.
9. The Council says its duty is to oversee the operations of the borough council and it has no duty to look into individual parking enforcement matters.
10. The terms of the agreement between the two councils allow the Council to step in and take over the functions of the borough council for a period if necessary. It can also do so without agreement if it is deemed that urgent action is required by the Council.

What happened

11. Mr X was issued a PCN on 30 April 2019 for ‘parking in a restricted street during the prescribed hours.’
12. Mr X challenged the PCN. He did not consider the way the borough council dealt with his challenge was fair. He also complained that the borough council had been unresponsive to his concerns, saying that he had written to the leader of the borough council three times without response. Mr X considered that the Council would be able to intervene as the borough council acts on the Council’s behalf when carrying out its enforcement operations.
13. On 19 March 2020 an officer from the Council, Officer Z, comprehensively responded to Mr X’s request for help. He addressed the particulars of Mr X’s situation. He said that parking enforcement should be fair and consistent and that due consideration should be given to the individual circumstances of each case. He commented that some of the extenuating circumstances that Mr X had mentioned might have more merit than others. However, he stressed that he did not have all the facts in his possession. Further, he said that he was aware of the area Mr X had been issued the PCN and did not consider that it was necessarily unreasonable for parking tickets to be issued in that area.
14. However, although Officer Z said that the Council did not get involved in individual cases, he offered to contact the borough council’s parking services manager on Mr X’s behalf. He said he would ask her to look into Mr X’s case and check that she was satisfied with the way it was handled. He also provided Mr X with the details necessary to make a formal complaint to the borough council if he felt it had provided a poor service.
15. On 2 June 2020 Mr X chased an update from Officer Z. Officer Z wrote to the borough council and set out Mr X’s grievance.
16. He was told that the borough council was satisfied with the way it had addressed Mr X’s response.
17. Officer Z wrote to Mr X on 24 June 2020. He again said that it would be more appropriate for Mr X to take up his complaint with the borough council. He stressed that the Council do not manage the borough council’s enforcement team and so have no direct involvement with individual cases.
18. Mr X responded that he would have expected the Council to retain a duty of care that the process is properly administered by the borough council.
19. Mr X chased a response to this on two occasions and Officer Z then responded on 17 November 2020. He said that if the Council was not happy with the way that one of its agents was carrying out parking enforcement, there are clauses in the agreement which allow for them to be cancelled. However, he said that he would have thought that there would need to be evidence of systematic and ongoing misadministration before they would take such a step. He said that with the transfer of functions to the borough council, it is the borough council that has the duty to administer the process in a fair and equitable way.
20. Mr X asked Officer Z if he should write to the leader of the borough council or the chief executive. Officer Z advised him that he could address his complaint to the chief executive, although he said that it might not be considered as a formal complaint if he did so. However, he said that looking at the borough’s complaint scheme, it did appear that a request for a stage 2 complaint could be addressed to the chief executive’s department. But he said he wished to make it clear that if Mr X wanted to make a corporate complaint, he should follow the borough’s complaints scheme.
21. Mr X wrote to the interim chief executive of the borough council. He said he was unhappy with the response he received, which in his view reiterated the unhelpful response he had had in the past. He again asked the Council to intervene on his behalf.
22. The Council responded that it was not clear from what Mr X had said that he had actually complained using the Council’s formal complaint’s procedure. He said that if he had done so, then the final stage would be to take his complaint to the Ombudsman service.
23. Mr X then took his complaint through the formal process at the borough council. He was, ultimately, referred to the Ombudsman service.

Analysis

24. The agreement between the Council and borough council sets out that the responsibility for the actual day to day management and operation of the functions or parking enforcement service rests with the borough council as an enforcement agent.
25. It does however also give the Council scope to intervene in some circumstances, including if there was an urgent reason. It retains the ability to take over those functions for a period of time if the necessity arose. Officer Z’s understanding that this would most likely be in circumstances where there had been evidence of systemic and ongoing misadministration seems fair.
26. In Mr X’s case, while it caused Mr X some concern, the facts as presented to Officer Z, did not, in my view, suggest that there was evidence of a systemic or ongoing misadministration that would need to be urgently addressed. While Officer Z considered that there might be some merit to some of the points Mr X made, he was clear that he was not in possession of all the facts and also commented that it was not unreasonable to receive a PCN in that particular area, which was one of Mr X’s main arguments. The borough council had a complaints process that could address complaints about its process and it was reasonable that this should be engaged first.
27. Officer Z repeatedly informed Mr X that he should engage the borough council’s complaints process in order to resolve his complaint. If, after Mr X had done so, Mr X had not been responded to through that process, it might have been a cause for concern for the Council. Mr X said his letters to the leader of the council had not been responded to, but he had not engaged the borough’s formal complaints process. In any case, Officer Z advised him that if he had not been responded to from the borough’s leader of the council, that could be a cause for complaint as well, but not one the Council would have any involvement in.
28. However, during Mr X’s correspondence with Officer Z, although Mr X was advised to take his complaint up with the borough council using the formal process, he did not do so until a much later stage. After that, he came to the Ombudsman. I do not find the Council at fault.

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Final decision

29. I have not found the Council at fault and have now completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman