Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a delayed council tax bill as there is insufficient remaining injustice caused to the complainant to justify our further action.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council notified him in 2024 about a missed council tax payment from 2021. Mr X considers the Council is at fault for not collecting the missed payment as he had a direct debit set up. Mr X is unhappy with the Council's response when he challenged this matter and that extra costs were added to the account when the Council issued him with a summons. Mr X wants the Council to apologise and to remove the additional costs from the account.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, and further investigation would not lead to a different outcome (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
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)

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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. In the time after Mr X complained to us, the Council contacted him to apologise and to confirm that it had cancelled the recovery action on the account and removed the extra costs as a gesture of goodwill because of the delay in it notifying Mr X of the missed payment.
7. This is essentially the outcome Mr X sought and so I do not consider there are grounds for our further action. I recognise Mr X may remain dissatisfied to some degree about how this was handled but this does not represent a level of injustice, from our perspective, to justify an investigation by us.
8. If Mr X does not accept that he owes the amount the Council says he does, he can appeal to the independent body called the Valuation Tribunal, that deals with such disputes.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is insufficient remaining injustice caused to him to justify our further involvement.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman