Decision Report 201304436

Summary

Mr C is a landlord of a property classed as a house of multiple occupancy. When he asked the council to uplift bulk waste he says he was told that he had to pay for the service, as his premises were commercial. Mr C disputed this and said that he paid council tax and if his premises were being classed as commercial he should have been paying business rates. He told us that it took the council three months to respond to his enquiries and complaints about the matter, and he still did not have a satisfactory explanation. He complained to us about the classification of his property and about the council's complaints handling.

We found that the council had not in fact classified Mr C's property as commercial, and we did not uphold that complaint. We did find, however, that he had been given misleading information that caused him to believe this.

We upheld Mr C's complaint about the council's complaints handling. We noted that they had written to him apologising for the delay in providing their written response, and that the information he had been given about a charge was inaccurate. They confirmed that there would be no charges involved in arranging a bulk uplift. They also arranged for the correct procedural information to be given to senior management at the call centre he had contacted, which was to be communicated to all staff dealing with the public to ensure that customers are accurately advised in future.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• ensure that call centre staff are reminded of how to deal appropriately with complaints; and
• apologise to Mr C for the poor service he received from the call centre.