Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a parking penalty charge notice as the Council has cancelled it and apologised. I do not consider there is sufficient remaining injustice to warrant our further involvement.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council unnecessarily caused her stress and anxiety by pursuing a parking penalty charge notice (PCN) it had issued to her, despite Miss X advising the Council that she had paid to park. Miss X also complains the Council failed to properly deal with her complaint about this.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)
3. 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)
4. We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. In its complaint response to Miss X, the Council confirmed it had cancelled the PCN after it had established Miss X had purchased a valid parking session. It apologised to Miss X for not having done this following her initial contact and for the distress, inconvenience and frustration she had been caused.
8. I recognise that Miss X remains unhappy about what took place, but the Council cancelled the PCN and apologised to her and I consider this provides a satisfactory remedy for the injustice caused. In saying this, I have also taken account of the fact that had the Council not cancelled the PCN, then the next step would have been for Miss X to follow the statutory appeal process to challenge it, rather than complaining to us. I appreciate Miss X was caused upset but disputing a PCN is likely to be inherently stressful and the remedy provided in law is the cancellation of a PCN by way of appeal. The law makes provision for compensation in only very limited circumstances.
9. As we will not investigate the substantive matter, the PCN, we will not investigate the Council’s handling of Miss X’s complaint about it, as per paragraph four. This is because I do not consider that any injustice arising from any Council fault in this regard is sufficient to warrant our further involvement, as a separate matter.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because the Council has provided a satisfactory remedy for the injustice caused and there is insufficient injustice arising separately from the Council’s complaint handling to warrant our further involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman