Summary: Mr X complained that he should not have to pay storage costs before his car is released by enforcement agents acting on behalf of the Council. He says he has suffered injustice because being without a car has meant he has had difficulty working and made it difficult for him to visit his child. We find the Council at fault and have made recommendations to remedy the injustice caused.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains that the Council (through its agent, a debt enforcement agent) should not have charged him for the storage of his car at a holding pound.
2. He says this has caused him an injustice because he has found it difficult to travel to work and to see his child, who lives some distance away.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. We investigate complaints about councils and certain other bodies. Where an individual, organisation or private company is providing services on behalf of a council, we can investigate complaints about the actions of these providers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 25(7), as amended)
5. When considering complaints, if there is a conflict of evidence, we make findings based on the balance of probabilities. This means that we will weigh up the available relevant evidence and base our findings on what we think was more likely to have happened.
6. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I spoke with Mr X.
8. I reviewed the response by the Council to my enquiries.
9. Mr X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on a draft decision. Their comments were considered before making this final decision.

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What I found

10. Below is a chronology of the relevant facts in this case. It is not meant to record everything that happened.
11. On 8 March 2022, Mr X’s car was impounded by bailiffs acting for the Council. Mr X had seven unpaid penalty charge notices (PCNs). Mr X challenged six of these fines as he said he had not known of their existence as all the relevant correspondence about the PCNs had been sent to an incorrect address. Mr X says that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) had mislaid his application to change his last known address, which is why all correspondence was sent there. In any event, this was not the Council’s fault.
12. The records show Mr X did not challenge the seventh PCN. A Council officer said it was not sent to the Council’s enforcement agents because it had been ‘missed’.
13. On 23 May 2022, the Traffic Enforcement Centre, (TEC), the court that had been dealing with Mr X’s appeals against his PCNs, informed Mr X, by text message that six of Mr X’s PCNs had been revoked.
14. On 31 May 2022, the TEC informed the Council of the revocation.
15. On 8 June 2022, Mr X called the Council. An officer told Mr X that the Council had not been updated by the TEC yet and advised him to contact the TEC.
16. Mr X called the Council again on 13 June and 20 June 2022. On each occasion he was told that the PCNs were still on hold, except one. It appears this was the PCN that had not been sent to the Council’s enforcement agents. The officer recorded that it had only been sent to enforcement agents on 17 June 2022.
17. On 24 June 2022, Mr X called the Council again. He said he wanted his car back. An officer Mr X spoke to confirmed that:

• Mr X had submitted six out of time statutory declarations and the original six PCNs had been revoked by the court.
• The Council said it issued those PCNs to his new address. (It is relevant to this decision to note that the Council had Mr X’s new address at this stage.)

18. Mr X was told he could not have his car back until a decision had been made by the TEC in relation to the last PCN.
19. The officer sent an internal message asking if the enforcement agent team could release Mr X’s car before receiving the outcome from the TEC about Mr X’s seventh PCN. He noted that Mr X said he was finding it difficult to carry out his day to day work without his car. The officer’s internal message said, “…we had not passed all pcns to [enforcement agents] so one PCN [the number] was missed.”
20. On 27 June 2022, an officer emailed Mr X saying it was the enforcement agents who had the discretion to release his vehicle. She said Mr X could make a payment to release the car and that would be refunded if the outcome of his application was returned in his favour.
21. By 28 June 2022, the Council had not changed Mr X’s address. In a call recording I listened to, the enforcement agent Mr X spoke to said she still had Mr X’s old address on file. In the same call, Mr X made a payment towards the debt but said he could not afford to pay the full amount outstanding for the agents to release his car. He was told, at this stage, that it was over £500.
22. On 11 July 2022, some evidence indicates that an agent from the enforcement agents phoned Mr X twice and left a voicemail, saying the Council had instructed them to release Mr X’s car. However, there is no record of the calls or messages as the Council says the call was made using a mobile and Mr X says he did not get any message. However, he says he missed some calls, which he accepts could have been from enforcement agents. He says that, at the time, he was receiving a lot of spam calls and avoided answering unknown numbers.
23. On 20 July 2022, Mr X complained to the Council that no one had contacted him about collecting his car. He said the TEC had told him it had informed the Council on 31 May 2022 that his PCNs had been revoked, and yet, even though he needed his car for work, he had still not been allowed to collect his car.
24. On 22 July 2022, the Council’s enforcement agents sent a letter to Mr X’s old address saying he could collect his car and that, if he did not collect it within seven days, it would be sold. (The sale was later put on hold.)
25. On 28 July 2022, the Council wrote to Mr X, telling him he could collect his car and giving him a number to call to arrange collection. When Mr X tried to arrange collection, the agents told him he would have to pay storage fees before the car was released. The agents said they had tried to call him “numerous times” but he had not answered his phone. Citing the calls made, the call operative referred to the two calls she said an enforcement agent made to Mr X on 11 July 2022. She said the agency had also written to Mr X. Mr X said he had not received this letter because it was sent to an old address. The call operative said it was Mr X’s responsibility to change his address with the DVLA.
26. Mr X said he had tried to do this but his application had gone astray and that this was accepted by the court, which was why his PCNs had been revoked. The operative said the agency had checked his address again on 8 May 2022 and, even after the court proceedings regarding his previous PCNs, he had still failed to change it. The call was cut off and Mr X called back. He spoke to another operative who stressed to Mr X that the situation was Mr X’s fault for failing to answer his phone. He said it was his responsibility to pay his storage fees and that they were increasing daily.
27. Mr X contacted the Council, complaining that he should not have to pay storage vehicles for a period of time when he was not aware he could have collected the car. He said he could not afford to pay the storage fees. He also complained that his address had not been updated and so he had not received the letter informing him he could pick up his car.
28. A Council officer said she would make enquiries with the agency. She did this and then said that, as she was satisfied the agency had tried to contact Mr X to tell him he could pick up the car, “...the matter is no longer one for the council.”
29. Mr X queried with the Council why it had taken so long to instruct its client, the agency, to release his car, given that it had known of the revocation of his PCNs since 31 May 2022. The Council does not seem to have answered this question. However, the Council wrote to Mr X on 5 August 2022 saying it had decided that its enforcement agents had contacted Mr X ‘enough times’ after the release of his car.
30. Mr X took his complaint to the Ombudsman on 12 August 2022.
31. I have seen records that show officers discussed the case with their enforcement agents and decided the approach to Mr X’s case had been appropriate.
32. The Council continued to advise Mr X to collect his car but Mr X said the case was with a legal team and he had been advised not to pay anything until his car was released.

Analysis

33. The Council is at fault in this case. It was not the Council’s fault that Mr X’s car was impounded. The Council understandably used the last known address it had for Mr X to communicate about his PCNs with him. However, when it transpired that Mr X had tried to change this address with the DVLA and when the TEC revoked his PCNs, the Council should have acted quicker to ensure that his car was released.
34. Mr X’s car was impounded because of six unpaid PCNs. When these were revoked, and the Council became aware of this, on 31 May 2022, steps should have been put into place to begin the process of releasing Mr X’s car to him.
35. There was a delay in this happening because the Council said Mr X needed to file an appeal in relation to a seventh PCN that an officer described as having been ‘missed’. The Council says this was an error by Mr X. But the records indicate that the seventh PCN was not sent to the Council’s enforcement agents until 17 June 2022.That would indicate that Mr X’s car was impounded based on Mr X’s failure to pay the initial group of six PCNs, not the seventh. It would mean that the Council should not have continued to impound Mr X’s car while the Council was making a decision to align the seventh PCN with the initial six.
36. The Council was, or should have been, aware, that the seventh PCN had been sent to the same address as the first six and had been issued at around the same time. It appears it also knew that the only reason it had not been sent to the enforcement agents was because it had been “missed”.
37. The Council is at fault for failing to release Mr X’s car at an earlier stage.
38. Being without his car caused Mr X considerable injustice. He says he used his car for work and to visit his child. His ability to do both would have been limited.
39. The Council says it told Mr X he could collect his car on 27 June 2022. However, this is incorrect because it did not instruct its agents that Mr X could collect his car until 11 July 2022. The Council also say Mr X could have collected his car when its agents called him on 11 July 2022. However, I accept, on balance, that Mr X did not receive these messages. (Mr X sent a complaint to the Council on 20 July 2022 about being unable to collect his car and I doubt he would have sent that complaint had he received the 11 July 2022 messages.)
40. It was also the Council’s responsibility to pass on Mr X’s new address to its enforcement agents so that it was able to use that when it wrote to him on 22 July 2022. It did not do so and the information that Mr X’s car was ready for collection, was sent to the wrong address. Given that Mr X’s PCNs had been revoked because of an incorrect address, the Council was on notice that it should have been advisable to update Mr X’s address details. (I also note that the Council says it re-issued Mr X’s PCNs to a new address so it was aware of it.)
41. The Council had been in email contact with Mr X during the month of June 2022 and when he did not answer calls, in my view, it would have been reasonable to have emailed him to tell him he could collect his car, as it eventually did on 28 July 2022. It was aware that Mr X wanted his car as he had been in contact with Council officers at least four times during the month of June, trying to find out when he could collect his car.
42. Mr X was told that from the date he was told he could collect his car, he had three days to collect it before storage fees would apply. Therefore, Mr X could have collected his car on or about 1 August 2022.
43. However, on 1 August 2022, Mr X told the Council that the storage company would not release his car until the storage fees had been paid. The sum at this stage, was in the region of £400. Mr X said he could not afford to pay and did not consider it fair that he should have to.
44. The Council’s response was that it considered Mr X had been contacted ‘enough’ times and that the matter was no longer one for the Council. I disagree. The Council’s enforcement agents acted on instruction from the Council. The Council says it has no specific policy on the times and actions required to contact a customer in these circumstances. However, it considers the efforts made were “comprehensive and reasonable”. Again, I do not agree. The agent who the Council says contacted Mr X on 11 July 2022 did so via mobile phone so there is no record of the contact. The other contact, before 28 July 2022, when Mr X accepts he was contacted, was by a letter sent to an address the Council was on notice was no longer in use by Mr X.
45. Mr X says he wanted the release of his car for work and to see his child. The records show he contacted the Council regularly during June 2022 about his car so I do not consider, on balance, that Mr X would have delayed collecting his car if he had been told that he could do so, either in early June 2022 (when I consider he should have been informed and wasn’t) or on 11 July 2022 (when I do not consider he was informed properly). He had to manage during that period without a car. I consider there would have been no reason for Mr X not to collect his car other than that inappropriate storage charges had been applied.
46. I therefore consider that Mr X has been without a car, because of Council fault, up until todays date. Mr X has asked for compensation to be paid to him which reflects the difficulties he experienced getting to work without his car.
47. However, when we recommend payment, it is often a modest, symbolic amount. It is not our role to assess economic losses or award compensation. That is a matter for the courts. I have therefore not made a recommendation for compensation but for an acknowledgement of the serious prolonged distress and inconvenience the Council’s actions caused. This payment has been increased because the Council took almost three months to respond to my enquiries causing further inconvenience to Mr X. The amount recommended is in line with our Guidance on Remedies.
48. I have not made any recommendations about what Mr X sees as the potential loss of value of his car while it has been sitting in storage. That is not the role of the Ombudsman, as explained above.

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Agreed action

49. The Council should, without delay, arrange for Mr X’s car to be released.
50. Within four weeks of the date of this decision, the Council should:

• Revoke any storage costs and inform Mr X.
• Apologise to Mr X for the fault identified in this decision.
• Pay Mr X the sum of £1000 to acknowledge the distress and inconvenience of not having his car from June 2022 to February 2023.

51. Within two months of our final decision, the Council should:
1. Review the policies and procedures it has for working with its enforcement agents.
2. Have systems in place for ensuring that its records are updated when informed of a service-users change of address and that all known methods of communication with a service-user are utilised before applying storage charges for keeping a car in storage when it has been released for collection.
52. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

53. I have completed this investigation. The Council was at fault and caused Mr X an injustice. It will take action to remedy this.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman