The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council sending council tax documents to the wrong address. This is because the case does not meet the tests in our Assessment Code on how we decide which complaints to investigate. Mr X has not been caused a significant personal injustice and we could not add anything to the Council’s response.
The complaint
The complainant, Mr X, complained the Council continue to write to him using an out-of-date address about his council tax account. Mr X wants the Council to stop doing this and to contact him via email.
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 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, or we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or there is another body better placed to consider this complaint, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
We will not start an investigation into Mr X’s complaint. While I understand his frustrations, Mr X has not been caused a personal injustice significant enough to warrant our involvement. The Council has also told us it will contact Mr X to discuss his request. If we investigated, we could not achieve anything more.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because he has not been caused a significant personal injustice and we could not achieve anything more for him.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman