Birmingham City Council (24 018 583)
Category : Transport and highways > Parking and other penalties
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 04 Mar 2025
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s failure to update its records about several penalty charge notices issued to the former tenant of his property. This is because the Council’s actions did not cause Mr X significant injustice.
The complaint
- Mr X complains the Council sent correspondence about several penalty charge notices (PCNs) to his house addressed to a former tenant. He says he tried to contact the Council to let them know the person had moved but the Council would not accept this. He wants the Council to compensate him for the time he has spent dealing with the matter.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect 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 an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by Mr X and the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- We do not investigate all the complaints we receive. In deciding whether to investigate we need to consider various tests. These include the alleged injustice to the person complaining. We only investigate the most serious complaints.
- Mr X is not liable for the PCN and confirms that when the Council passed the case to enforcement agents (bailiffs) the bailiffs accepted what he said and told him they would not contact him again. So while I appreciate Mr X was frustrated the Council did not act on the information he provided I do not consider this caused him significant injustice.
Final decision
- We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the Council’s actions did not cause Mr X significant enough injustice to warrant investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman