Summary: We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of a penalty charge notice. This is because the complaint is late and there are no good reasons to exercise our discretion to investigate it. It would in any event have been reasonable for Mrs X to challenge the Council’s escalation of the case with the Traffic Enforcement Centre at the time.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains about a penalty charge notice (PCN) issued by the Council in 2022. She says there was an error with the Council’s parking permit payment system and that despite trying to appeal against the PCNs the Council ignored her correspondence. She says the Council’s enforcement agents visited her property on the day she was leaving to go abroad to care for her elderly parents and forced to her to pay £484 to settle the case.

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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.
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. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone has a right of appeal, reference or review to a tribunal about the same matter. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to use this right. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
5. London Tribunals considers parking and moving traffic offence appeals for London.
6. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
7. The Traffic Enforcement Centre (TEC) is part of Northampton County Court. It considers applications from local authorities to pursue payment of unpaid PCNs and from motorists to challenge local authorities’ pursuit of unpaid PCNs.

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered information provided by Mrs X and the Council.
9. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

10. The actions Mrs X complains about date back to October 2022 but Mrs X did not bring her complaint to us until July 2024. The complaint is therefore some eight months outside our time limit for investigation.
11. Mrs X says she has suffered stress and anxiety and gone to significant effort to pursue the matter with the Council but this does not provide grounds to exercise our discretion to investigate her complaint. Mrs X was aware of the issues she has asked us to investigate at the time and it would have been reasonable for her to bring the complaint to us sooner.
12. Further, the PCN itself carried a right of appeal to London Tribunals and in the event the Council failed to respond to Mrs X’s representations against it, Mrs X could have asked the TEC to cancel the Council’s escalation of the case and take it back to an earlier stage. It is therefore likely, had Mrs X complained to us at the time, that we would have declined investigation and referred her to this process in accordance with Paragraph 6 above.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because it is late and it would have been reasonable for Mrs X to take the matter to the TEC.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman