Summary: We cannot investigate the Council’s use of enforcement agents in recovering a penalty charge notice as the complainant referred this matter to court and it is therefore no longer within our remit. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about procedural faults regarding the enforcement agent action as this has not, as yet, been dealt with by the Council

The complaint

1. Miss X complains that the Council used enforcement agents (EA) to collect an outstanding penalty charge notice (PCN) without checking her home address and failed to put the case on hold after Miss X had asked the Traffic Enforcement Centre (TEC) to consider her case. Miss X complains the Council’s EA visited her home without warning and failed to properly deal with a complaint she made to it about this.

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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. The courts have said that where someone has sought a remedy by way of proceedings in any court of law, we cannot investigate. This is the case even if the appeal did not or could not provide a complete remedy for all the injustice claimed. (R v The Commissioner for Local Administration ex parte PH (1999) EHCA Civ 916)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. We cannot investigate the Council’s use of enforcement agents as Miss X used her appeal right to the court at the TEC, by making a statutory declaration to it, to challenge the enforcement of the PCN, as per paragraph three. The TEC rejected Miss X’s statutory declaration which effectively upheld the use of EA and recovery action could therefore continue.
7. Miss X complains the Council failed to put the EA action on hold after she told it she had made a statutory declaration to the TEC, that after the TEC had rejected her statutory declaration, the EA visited her property without prior notice and that it then failed to properly deal with a complaint she made to it.
8. The Council has told me it has no record of a complaint from Miss X about these matters and so it has not considered them through its complaint procedure. We will not investigate as the appropriate way forward is for the Council to respond to these issues, before we assess any remaining complaint. I have asked the Council to do that now.

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Final decision

9. We cannot investigate the Council’s use of EA as this is outside our remit since Miss X used her right to appeal to court about it. The associated matters will be considered by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman