Summary: We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s handling of a Penalty Charge Notice. This is because he has appealed the matter to the Tribunal.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the Council’s handling of a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN). He says the Council failed to ensure and evidence proper service of its rejection to his online challenge. He also complains about the Council’s handling of his complaint about the matter.
2. Mr X says the matter caused him avoidable time and distress. He wants the Council to review it procedures for issuing notices and train its complaint handling staff. He also wants the Council to provide him an appropriate remedy and reconsider enforcement action.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
4. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
5. London Tribunals considers appeals about PCNs within London.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by Mr X.
7. I also considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Mr X appealed the PCN to London Tribunals claiming he had not received the Council’s rejection letter to his informal challenge. London Tribunals was satisfied there was no procedural impropriety in this case. We therefore cannot investigate this aspect of Mr X’s complaint because he has appealed to London Tribunals
9. As a publicly funded body we must be careful how we use our resources. We conduct proportionate investigations; completing them when we consider we have enough evidence to make a sound decision. This means we do not try to answer every single question a complainant may have about what the organisation did. As we are not investigating the substantive issue of this complaint, it is not a good use of public resources to investigate the complaint handling in isolation.

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Final decision

10. We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint because he has appealed the matter to the Tribunal.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman