The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to here as Mrs B, complains her company received an enforcement notice from a bailiff instructed by the Council. The notice was for an unpaid Penalty Charge Notice (“PCN”). The Council and its bailiff had linked the car to Mrs B’s company. Mrs B says the car had nothing to do with her company or any of its employees. Mrs B says when she told the Council and its agent this they continued to ask for payment and wrongly advised her to file for a statutory declaration.

What I found

5. Mrs B owns a company (“the Company”). In September 2017, the Company received a notice of enforcement from a bailiff instructed by the Council. The notice was for an unpaid PCN against a car the bailiff had linked to the Company.
6. When the Council initially issued the PCN it asked for the car’s registered address from the DVLA. The DVLA provided information, which listed the car’s registered address. The Company’s name appeared at the top of that address.
7. The Council sent PCN’s to the address but did not receive a response or payment of the fine. The Council therefore passed the matter to a bailiff. The bailiff traced the Company to their normal business address and sent a notice of enforcement for the unpaid PCN.
8. An employee of the Company told the bailiff and the Council neither the Company, or anyone associated with it, owned the car or knew anything about the PCN. The employee said she had asked the DVLA to provide a letter showing the Company was not the registered keeper.
9. The Council said it had followed the correct procedure and there were not enough grounds to cancel or put the PCN on hold. It advised the Company to make an out of time statutory declaration to the Traffic Enforcement Centre (“TEC”), if it wished to appeal the fine.
10. In October 2017, the Company made an application to file a statutory declaration but the TEC refused the application.
11. An employee of the Company wrote to the Council and bailiff again in November 2017 to say the PCN had nothing to do with them. The employee said the DVLA had asked for further information and they needed reasonable time to provide this. He asked the Council to treat the letter as a complaint and withdraw the debt from the bailiff.
12. The Council acknowledged the complaint in early December 2017 and said it would respond within 21 days. Mrs B emailed the Council a day later to say the DVLA requested more information and ask again not to take action to recover the debt. She emailed to say the same again a few days later. This time the Council responded to say the complaint was currently under investigation and the matter was on hold. However, on the same day, the bailiff sent another notice of enforcement to the Company. The next day the bailiff sent an email to say it had removed the Company’s address from its system.
13. Mrs B contacted the bailiff, who said the address change happened after it sent the notice of enforcement. It said the notice was no longer valid.
14. The Council sent a response to the Company’s complaint in late December 2017. It said it looked like someone who knows or worked for the Company may have registered the car with the DVLA at the different address. It placed the case on indefinite hold to allow time for the Company to hear back from the DVLA.
15. The DVLA sent a letter to the Company in mid-December 2017. The Company did not receive this letter until January 2018. It said the car was not registered to the Company or its address but someone had tried to it to the Company’s name at a different address. The DVLA asked for more information about the Company’s former addresses.
16. The Company provided the information and the DVLA sent a final letter in early February 2018, which confirmed the car was not registered to the Company. Around the same time, the bailiff sent an email to the Company, which threatened a visit to take control of goods because of non-payment of the fine. Mrs B replied, attaching the letter from the DVLA. The bailiff said the letter did not clarify matters and would continue with enforcement action. Mrs B sent the email to the Council, who then told the bailiff not to continue.
17. The Council accepted it would not continue to chase the fine from the Company because of the DVLA letter. The Council responded in full to the complaint and offered £50 in compensation. Mrs B said the amount of work and distress caused by the matter amounted to around £1,900. The Council changed its offer on review of the complaint to £75, then to £150 at the Chief Executive stage of the procedure.
18. Mrs B says the amount offered is disproportionate to the amount of work and stress caused. She says the cost incurred are now closer to £2,200.

Findings

Fault

19. The Council accepts that when the Company responded to the notice of enforcement in September 2017, it failed to properly explore whether the information the bailiff relied on was reliable.
20. The DVLA had provided information that indicated the Company owned the car. The bailiff then traced the company to its business address. However, the Council accepts the Company’s response should have raised doubt about whether it was the owner. The Council officer involved should then have asked for advice from a senior officer and possibly placed the matter on hold whilst waiting for information from the DVLA.
21. Instead the officer was certain he was dealing with the keeper and advised the Company to apply to file a statutory declaration. The Council accepts that in hindsight this was the wrong course of action.
22. The Council says it did not instruct the bailiff to start recovery action again in February 2018 and accepts it should not have done so when the matter was on indefinite hold. The Council says it told the bailiff not to continue as soon as Mrs B brought this to their attention.
23. It is for the above reasons the Council has offered the £150.
24. I mostly agree with the Council’s response about where there were failings. It instructed bailiffs to recover the fine based on the information it received from the DVLA. The bailiffs then linked the company name to its business address, despite that being a different address to the one registered to the car.
25. I cannot find fault in the initial link being made because the information from the DVLA did name the company as being the registered keeper. However, given that it showed a different address, when the Company denied all knowledge of the car and fine, the Council should have placed the matter on hold and investigated sooner. It should not have recommended applying to file a statutory declaration.
26. The Council did eventually place the matter on hold awaiting the DVLA information. However, bailiff sent an email threatening removal of goods in February 2018 when it should still have been on hold. The Council did not instruct it to do so, but is responsible for the fault of a bailiff acting on its behalf.
27. I am also of the view there is fault in the bailiff sending a second notice of enforcement sent to the Company in December 2017. At this point in time the Council was investigating the complaint and the matter should have been on hold. The bailiff should not, therefore have sent this notice.

Injustice

28. The Ombudsman encourages councils to offer remedies and will consider any offer made. We will not interfere if we consider the proposal is satisfactory to address the injustice caused. We will consider any distress the Council’s actions may have caused and any time and trouble spent bringing the complaint. However, we will not normally recommend payment of any legal fees or loss of earnings.

Distress

29. Distress can be caused by uncertainty, undue significant stress, inconvenience and frustration. Any contact from a bailiff is likely to cause some distress. I must consider a range of factors including how persistently the bailiff chased the debt, over what length of time, whether goods were seized and the vulnerability of the person affected.
30. The main cause of stress, uncertainty and inconvenience in this matter, comes from the fact the bailiff linked the fine to the Company in the first place. If this had not happened, none of the stress, inconvenience or uncertainty would have followed. However, I have not found fault with the Council in this respect as it relied on information from the DVLA. Mrs B would therefore have had to obtain information from the DVLA saying the car was not linked to the Company, even if the Council had responded appropriately.
31. I can only look the areas in which Mrs B suffered added, undue distress because of failures by the Council and its bailiffs.
32. Applying for a statutory declaration did not incur any direct fees to the court but would have caused added inconvenience and uncertainty. However, after this happened, and the Company complained, the Council did recognise the issues and put the matter on hold awaiting information from the DVLA.
33. The second notice of enforcement in December 2017 and the email from the bailiff in February 2018 are likely to have caused added stress and uncertainty. However, on both occasions, the Company contacted the bailiff and/or Council and received confirmation within a day that the notices were invalid. The bailiffs did not attend the property.
34. The threat to remove goods would have caused stress and uncertainty about a possible impact on the functioning of the business, as well as the potential effect on its credit rating. However, we would normally only recommend a significantly higher payment than the one the Council has offered, in situations where, for example, a vulnerable person received repeated notices, or where the Council completely ignored their complaints. In this situation, although the matter would have put strain on what is a small business, I would not be able to recommend a significantly improved payment to what the Council has already offered.

Time and trouble

35. Mrs B says she and employees of the Company spent a lot of time dealing with this matter, which took them away from their normal roles. She also says she was forced to consider legal involvement or pay the fine.
36. It is clear Mrs B and the Company’s employees did spend a significant amount of time dealing with the complaint. As above, we will not normally consider any legal costs, loss of earnings or any quantified loss to the business by its employees being involved in the matter. However, it is likely would recommend a payment for time a trouble spent dealing with the matter and brining the complaint.
37. If I had found fault in the notice of enforcement being issued in the first place, it is likely I would recommend a higher amount than that already offered by the Council. This is because the whole process could have been avoided. However, I accept the notice was issued based on the information provided by the DVLA. Therefore, much the time Mrs B and her employees spent dealing with the matter, such as getting a letter from the DVLA, was unavoidable.
38. Again, I can only look at the added time and trouble caused by the Council’s fault.
39. The failure to place the matter on hold following contact from the Company in September 2017, and advice to apply for a statutory declaration, did lead to additional time and trouble for Mrs B and the Company. It meant spending time applying for a statutory declaration and drafting a complaint letter and various emails to the Council, bailiff and TEC.
40. The wrongly issued notices from the bailiff in December 2017 and February 2018 also meant Mrs B spent additional time responding to confirm no action would be taken at that time.
41. Based on the above, we would be unlikely to recommend more than a modest payment for time and trouble spent bringing the complaint.

Consideration of remedy

42. I understand this matter will have inevitably caused distress and inconvenience to Mrs B and her company. However, the Council’s offer is not substantially different to any recommendation we would make in this case for payments for distress and time and trouble. I therefore do not suggest a recommendation to increase the amount offered.
43. The Council has also apologised to Mrs B for actions of the bailiff and the inconvenience caused by its failure to put the matter on hold earlier, awaiting further information from the DVLA. I accept the Council’s apology is sufficient.

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Final decision

44. The Council is at fault for not putting the matter on hold earlier and because its bailiff wrongly sent two further notices of enforcement. However, the Council has apologised and offered a financial remedy and I would not recommend a remedy that is substantially different.