Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Councils handling of a penalty charge notice it issued to Mr X. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council affecting Mr X’s right of appeal against the penalty charge notice and it is unlikely investigation would achieve any worthwhile outcome for Mr X.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council unfairly handled his attempts to challenge a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN). He says he tried to make representations against the PCN but could not do so because the information required was missing from its letters.
2. Mr X then made a statutory declaration to the Traffic Enforcement Centre (TEC) but the TEC rejected the application as invalid.
3. Mr X says the considerable time taken trying to contact the Council and its threats of enforcement action have caused him distress. Mr X wants the Council to suspend enforcement action and take the PCN back to an earlier stage or cancel it.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating.
   (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
5. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
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 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 Mr X and the Council.
9. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

10. The Council issued Mr X a PCN in July 2025. Mr X complained to the Council in December 2025. He says he tried to the call the Council to challenge the PCN at the time, but it didn’t connect him to an adviser. He then tried to submit an appeal online, but the Council did not provide a web code so he was unable to do this.
11. It is unlikely we would find fault by the Council affecting Mr X’s right of appeal. This is because the Council provided the web code on the PCN issued to Mr X in July 2025. The PCN also had a form attached that Mr X could have used to submit representations by post. It is therefore unlikely we could achieve any worthwhile outcome for Mr X by investigating the matter further.
12. Mr X made a witness statement/statutory declaration to the TEC asking it to take the process back to an earlier stage but the TEC refused this application as invalid, stating he had not provided the full PCN number. From the evidence provided, Mr X did provide the correct details to the TEC, but it is unclear if the Council had registered the case with the TEC before he applied.
13. In any event, we cannot hold the Council responsible for the TEC’s decision not to accept Mr X’s application and if Mr X believes he has grounds to use the process it would be reasonable for him to approach the TEC again. Mr X can submit an out of time application to the TEC outlining the reasons why he did not approach it sooner, referring to the decision to refuse his first application.
14. If the TEC accepts Mr X’s application it may order the Council to revert the process to an earlier stage, reinstating his right to appeal. If the TEC refuses Mr X’s application, he may apply for a review of its decision.
15. Mr X is also unhappy with the way the Council 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

16. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council and it is unlikely investigation would achieve any worthwhile outcome for him.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman