The events leading to Ms M's complaint to the Ombudsman

The joint claim for tax credits

Ms M and her ex-partner (whom I shall refer to as Mr A) were jointly claiming tax credits until they separated. Ms M remained in the property they had shared, and Mr A moved to another town. On 7 January 2006 Ms M told the Tax Credit Office that on 2 January 2006 she had parted from Mr A. The Tax Credit Office sent Ms M a new application pack for her to make her own claim, which Ms M completed and returned promptly. Ms M and the Tax Credit Office corresponded about her claim without incident. On 6 September 2006 Ms M telephoned the Tax Credit Office. She told them she had moved house and gave them her new address.

Ms M’s data is changed

According to the Tax Credit Office’s computer records, on 7 December 2006 a department within HM Revenue & Customs received a ‘paper’ document relating to Ms M and Mr A’s joint tax credits claim, which was still open on the National Tax Credit System (Annex C). (This was because the final entitlement notice for the joint claim had not been sent out.) The nature of the document the Tax Credit Office received is now unclear; they have been unable to trace it or to establish whether it was sent directly to HM Revenue & Customs or passed to them by another government body. However, we do know that the Tax Credit Office then wrongly changed Ms M’s address on their computer system to the address to which Mr A had moved, in another town. There is no record to indicate why Ms M’s address was changed, or by whom, but Ms M has never lived at this address. Then, on 15 December 2006, they changed Mr A’s address details to his new address.
At some point between 14 and 19 December 2006 the Child Support Agency’s computer records were amended to show that Ms M was resident at Mr A’s address in another town.
On 10 January 2007 the Tax Credit Office put the following note on their computer system relating to Ms M and Mr A’s joint claim: ‘NU05 – COC [change of circumstances] address previously updated, HHBD [household breakdown], W/L [work list] item deleted TSCD/LPOOL/TEAM 5/AB’. (The Tax Credit Office say this meant that they had received information which meant that they should amend an address on Ms M and Mr A’s joint claim.) When the person tasked with this job checked the system, they found that the change had already been made. There are no records now available to show who had made the change or why.
Ms M’s data is disclosed to Mr A On 12 February 2007 the Tax Credit Office sent final award notices relating to Ms M and Mr A’s joint tax credits claim for the 2005-06 tax year, confirming how much money had been due to them as a couple. Both Mr A’s final award notice and the final award notice intended for Ms M were sent to Mr A at his new address. The Tax Credit Office also sent Ms M’s renewal pack for her single claim to Mr A’s address.

Having received Ms M’s final award notice, on 16 February 2007 Mr A telephoned the Tax Credit Office to tell them that she did not live, and had never lived, at his new address. Mr A returned the final award notice intended for Ms M to the Tax Credit Office, who recorded that he had done so and that he had given no forwarding address for Ms M. It is not clear whether Mr A had opened Ms M’s letter.

Ms M contacts the Tax Credit Office

On 13 June 2007 Ms M telephoned the Tax Credit Office querying the whereabouts of her tax credit renewal form. Ms M says that the Tax Credit Office told her they had ‘slightly the wrong address’ for her but did not go into detail. Ms M assumed the error was something small and thought nothing more of it. The Tax Credit Office’s computer record for 13 June 2007 shows that Ms M’s address had been changed, with no record of when or by whom, and without Ms M’s knowledge. The Tax Credit Office reissued the final award notice for Ms M’s joint claim and her annual declaration and renewal form for her single claim. Unfortunately, any correction the Tax Credit Office may have made to Ms M’s address as a result of her call does not appear to have taken effect. The Tax Credit Office sent Ms M’s annual declaration (for her claim as a single person) to Mr A’s new address the same day.

A week later, on 20 June 2007, Ms M telephoned the Tax Credit Office to renew her tax credit claim over the telephone. Ms M continued to correspond with the Tax Credit Office about her claim without any further issues with her address. (It is not clear when the Tax Credit Office corrected Ms M’s address. The Tax Credit Office say they have checked every award notice sent to Ms M from this point onwards and have confirmed that nothing further was sent to Mr A’s address.)

Ms M’s child support unexpectedly decreases

On 20 July 2007 the Child Support Agency completed a review of Ms M’s child support maintenance entitlement. On 23 July 2007 the Child Support Agency sent Ms M notice of her new entitlement (which had decreased). Ms M did not receive that notice because the Child Support Agency sent it to Mr A’s address, as this was the address held for her on the Child Support Agency’s computer system.

Ms M learns of the error in her data

On 11 October 2007 Ms M telephoned the Child Support Agency because she noticed that her child support payments had been reduced. Ms M told us that the Child Support Agency, when going through routine security questions with her, told her that they held a different address for her (that is, Mr A’s address). She said that she asked the Child Support Agency where they had got this address from and they told her that, on 15 December 2006, the Tax Credit Office had amended all of HM Revenue & Customs’ records, which were linked to the Child Support Agency’s computer system. She says that the Child Support Agency explained that they had sent notice of the changed assessment to the address held on their system. They also explained that she had missed the opportunity to comment on the change in her child support assessment. (The Child Support Agency’s records show only that Ms M told them there was a shortfall in her payments.)

Ms M complains to the Tax Credit Office

The same day, 11 October 2007, Ms M called the Tax Credit Office’s helpline asking to meet them to discuss why they had changed her address without her knowledge or permission. The Tax Credit Office set up an appointment with the HM Revenue & Customs’ Enquiry Centre for the following week.

On 15 October 2007 Ms M made a second call to the Child Support Agency about the problem with her address. The Child Support Agency have noted that they told Ms M that her address had been changed by their central computer system, in December 2006, to Mr A’s address and that Ms M told them that she had an appointment with the Tax Credit Office about this.

Ms M told us that when she arrived for her appointment with her local HM Revenue & Customs’ Enquiry Centre, staff told her ‘this is an income tax office, and we don’t deal with tax credits’. The officer dealing with her suggested she telephoned the Tax Credit Office and handed her a telephone so that she could speak to the Tax Credit Office. Ms M told us that she found the person she initially spoke to at the local HM Revenue & Customs’ Enquiry Centre very unhelpful and she ended up speaking to a manager. The manager had made some notes and promised to forward her complaint to the Tax Credit Office, from which she could expect to receive a reply in two weeks.

According to HM Revenue & Customs’ note of Ms M’s visit to the local Enquiry Centre, they told Ms M they were unable to say when, or by whom, the details of her address had been changed. They noted Ms M was concerned that Mr A might have been involved in some way, and advised her that they could not give her information about him for reasons of confidentiality. They also noted that Ms M wanted them to investigate what had happened, as she intended to involve the police unless it was clear that the Tax Credit Office had made a mistake. Finally, HM Revenue & Customs noted that they had asked the Tax Credit Office to contact Ms M and had given her information about their complaints process. On 29 October 2007 the Tax Credit Office wrote to Ms M acknowledging receipt of the complaint she had made at the local Enquiry Centre.

Ms M tries to establish what information has been disclosed

Meanwhile, on 27 October 2007, Ms M telephoned the Child Support Agency and asked them to provide copies of all the letters they had sent to her since her address had been amended to that of Mr A. On 4 November 2007 she asked the Tax Credit Office to provide copies of her previous two annual declarations and renewal forms because she wanted to know what information had been sent to Mr A. Ms M told us that she did not receive any of those documents from the Tax Credit Office.

Ms M called the Tax Credit Office on 7 November 2007. They noted that she had not yet received their acknowledgement of her complaint and that she was very concerned about the change to her address, which had also affected her records with the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions.13 The Tax Credit Office helpline asked their complaints section to call Ms M back. The following week Ms M called the Tax Credit Office again and, on 26 November 2007, she called them to complain that she had still not received a response to her complaint.

On 28 November 2007 Ms M called the Child Support Agency expressing her concern that someone might be using her personal details. The Child Support Agency explained that the Departmental Central Index (paragraph 17) had updated her address, and said that they would look into it. Meanwhile, the Child Support Agency suggested that they set up a password on her account for increased security.

The Tax Credit Office’s initial response to Ms M’s complaint

According to the Tax Credit Office’s records, on 28 November 2007 they called Ms M confirming that they had held an incorrect address for her and that they had sent the final award notice for her joint claim, her annual declaration and the renewal pack for her single claim to Mr A’s address. The Tax Credit Office told Ms M that Mr A had told them about their error in February 2007. They suggested that it was, therefore, unlikely that Mr A was responsible for the change to her address and that it was probably the Tax Credit Office’s error. The Tax Credit Office explained the complaints process to Ms M and offered her a compensation payment (amount unspecified) before closing the complaint. The Tax Credit Office did not send Ms M the promised payment.

Ms M’s recollection of this call is different. She recalled that the officer told her that everything she was telling him was impossible, and that there was no link between the Child Support Agency’s and the Tax Credit Office’s computers. She said that only after she had insisted that he look more carefully at her file, had he realised that there had been a serious breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 (paragraph 15) and apologised. The officer told her about the call Mr A had made on 16 February 2007 but said that the Tax Credit Office’s records had not been updated as a result of that call. He also told her that her address details had not been corrected after her call to them in June 2007. She said that the officer had offered a compensation payment but she had told him this was not good enough and she needed to know what had happened so that she could understand how serious the problem was.

Ms M pursues her complaint with the Tax Credit Office

Ms M wrote to the Tax Credit Office on 7 December 2007 and complained about their failure to answer her complaint. She said that she had repeatedly called the Tax Credit Office, which had only resulted in unkept promises. She said that the officer she had spoken to on 28 November 2007 had initially been dismissive. Ms M enclosed a chronology of events, and said that the issue had caused, and continued to cause, her a great deal of worry. She asked if the mistake was due to an administrative error or if some action by Mr A might be responsible. (She said that the ‘Serious Fraud Squad’ had investigated Mr A in the past.) She asked why her records were still connected with Mr A’s when she had done everything she could to sever their ties. Ms M said that she was worried about what her information might be used for. She said she did not know what information other government departments had disclosed to Mr A. Ms M asked the Tax Credit Office a number of questions, including why the Tax Credit Office had failed to correct her details after they realised that her address was wrong; whether Mr A was claiming benefit; why she was not receiving everything the Tax Credit Office sent out to her; why she had received such a poor service from the Tax Credit Office; and what they intended to do to resolve the situation. Ms M said the matter would be much easier to deal with if she could talk to someone about it.

Ms M followed up her letter by calling the Tax Credit Office on 13 December 2007, asking them to deal with her complaint urgently. An officer from the Tax Credit Office called Ms M the following week and explained that the Tax Credit Office had received the incorrect update to her address from the Department for Work and Pensions’ computer system. The Department for Work and Pensions’ computer system showed that the National Insurance Contributions Office’s computer system had updated it with the wrong address. The officer apologised, but said that the Tax Credit Office had not changed her address and had no control over what had happened. The officer told Ms M that her details on their computer system and the Department for Work and Pensions’ system were now correct. Ms M said that she had not yet received the redress promised by the Tax Credit Office and asked for a written reply.

Ms M seeks assurance that her records are correct

Ms M called her local Jobcentre Plus office on 20 December 2007 to discuss her situation. Jobcentre Plus made an appointment for her the following day. At that appointment, Jobcentre Plus took the details of Ms M’s complaint and, later that same day, telephoned her to say that a member of their security team was handling her complaint. Ms M sent a follow-up email to the Department for Work and Pensions’ security team, at their request.

The Tax Credit Office’s second response to Ms M’s complaint

The Tax Credit Office’s customer service manager wrote to Ms M on 19 February 2008. She said that she was sorry that Ms M was dissatisfied with the Tax Credit Office’s previous response to her complaint and for the inconvenience the administrative error had caused her. The customer service manager went on to tell Ms M:

‘Your address was incorrectly amended due to the incorrect recording of data within another department. At times government departments have shared basic customer data like changes in name and address through our computer systems and we can only assume that this is how the change was notified to tax credits as we have not manually made that change to your details.’

The customer service manager also said that ‘there is no evidence to show that there has been any breach of confidentiality’ and they were ‘satisfied that only disclosures allowed by law have been made’. The customer service manager said she could see from the records that the £50 they had promised (on 28 November 2007) had not been sent but Ms M should receive it within 21 days. The customer service manager apologised to Ms M for any upset this had caused and told her that if she remained unhappy, she could complain to the Adjudicator.

Ms M seeks a final assurance that all her records are correct

Ms M telephoned the National Insurance Contributions Office on 21 February 2008 and explained the problems she had been experiencing. Ms M told us that she recalls the National Insurance Contributions Office saying that they could see nothing wrong with their records and they believed the Tax Credit Office was to blame. She says they told her that, as the Tax Credit Office had sent her a letter and taken control of the complaint, they should handle it. (The National Insurance Contributions Office do not have a record of this call. However, their records show that Ms M’s address was updated on their National Insurance Recording System on that day by ‘call centre – DN/NI ENQ:81110391’. There is no indication as to the nature of the update or whether it was simply verification that they held the correct address for her. Ms M’s live address17 remained correct and unchanged after these updates.)

Ms M seeks help from her Member of Parliament

Ms M contacted her Member of Parliament on 22 February 2008. (She had not then received the Tax Credit Office’s letter of 19 February 2008.) She told her Member of Parliament that the Tax Credit Office, the Child Support Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions and the National Insurance Contributions Office had all blamed each other and her concerns remained unresolved. On 26 February 2008 Ms M forwarded a copy of the Tax Credit Office’s letter of 19 February 2008 to her Member of Parliament. She said she was not satisfied with it and she disputed the Tax Credit Office’s claim that they had not breached confidentiality. Ms M explained that the Tax Credit Office had sent a tax credits renewal pack (paragraph 19) to her ex-partner, Mr A, which would have contained her bank and salary details. Ms M said that she felt humiliated that Mr A had been given that information.

Ms M’s Member of Parliament wrote to the director of the Tax Credit Office, Ms M’s local HM Revenue & Customs office, Ms M’s local Jobcentre Plus, the Child Support Agency, and the National Insurance Contributions Office outlining the problems Ms M had experienced.

The agencies’ responses to Ms M’s Member of Parliament – the blame game

HM Revenue & Customs

The Tax Credit Office responded to Ms M’s Member of Parliament saying that Ms M’s joint claim with Mr A had ended and no further information would, therefore, be sent to him about it. The Tax Credit Office said that they had made every effort to change information on their computer system once they had been informed of a change of circumstances. They said they could only apologise for the errors. They confirmed that they had corrected Ms M’s address, but said they could not give Ms M any information about Mr A. The Tax Credit Office apologised for any upset to Ms M and said that, if she wished to take her complaint further, she could take her concerns to the Adjudicator.

HM Revenue & Customs’ Customer Operations (that is, income tax) complaints team wrote to Ms M’s Member of Parliament as well. They said that the problems appeared to relate to Ms M’s tax credits claim and noted that although their Taxpayer Business System had been updated with incorrect data, there was no sign that this change had been initiated by any communication with the Customer Operations part of HM Revenue & Customs.

The Customer Operations complaints team said that the Taxpayer Business System record, once updated, made changes to both the Customer Operations and Tax Credit Office records. They said that between 15 December 2006 and 18 October 2007, the only amendment to Ms M’s income tax records had been to her tax code (a new coding notice was sent to her employer). They confirmed that they had not sent any of Ms M’s tax information to Mr A’s address. The Customer Operations complaints team said that they would arrange for Ms M to be given a security password to use whenever she contacted them in the future. They apologised for what had happened and said that as the matter appeared to stem from the Tax Credit Office, they had referred her complaint to the Tax Credit Office for them to investigate.

Meanwhile, Ms M had made a subject access request18 under the Data Protection Act 1998, asking the Tax Credit Office for details of the information they had sent to Mr A’s address. (I have seen no evidence that the Tax Credit Office responded to this request.)

HM Revenue & Customs’ National Insurance Contributions Office replied to Ms M’s Member of Parliament. They said that they had checked their computer system (the National Insurance Recording System) and had found no trace that Mr A’s address had ever been inserted into Ms M’s National Insurance account. They said that, as they had not sent any correspondence to Ms M, they were unable to help resolve the problem. However, I have seen that, a week after sending that reply, the National Insurance Contributions Office noted that although their own computer system did not hold incorrect data, other HM Revenue & Customs’ systems, and other linked systems, did have an incorrect address for Ms M.19 They decided that, as Ms M’s National Insurance account reflected her correct address, they need take no further action. They did not tell the Member of Parliament what they had found.

On 17 July 2008 one of the Member of Parliament’s staff called the National Insurance Contributions Office. They explained that they had spoken to the Child Support Agency, who had told them that the incorrect address had gone onto the Customer Information System on 19 December 2006 and was shown as input by ‘NIRS technical support 9999’. They asked the National Insurance Contributions Office to investigate. The National Insurance Contributions Office explained that the National Insurance Recording System and Customer Information System transmit data to one another and, when they had previously looked into the matter, they had found that the erroneous address had not been on the National Insurance Recording System. The following day the National Insurance Contributions Office telephoned Ms M’s Member of Parliament’s office to say they would investigate the matter further.

During their investigation, the National Insurance Contributions Office found on 21 July 2008 that Ms M’s address had been incorrectly changed on the National Insurance Recording System to Mr A’s address on 19 December 2007, and it had been changed back to the correct address again the same day. (It is not clear why they were looking at December 2007.) The National Insurance Contributions Office tried to establish which government department had made this change. The records they obtained covered 1 December 2007 to 20 July 2008. (The National Insurance Contributions Office have been unable to explain why they did not look for an audit trail from 1 December 2006, the month in which the incorrect change of address had first occurred.)

The National Insurance Contributions Office’s records showed that the update to Ms M’s address in December 2007 had been reported through the ‘ADD system’.20 According to the National Insurance Contributions Office, that suggested that the erroneous address had been reported to their National Insurance Recording System automatically by another computer system. They also noted that a number of manual updates had been made in February 2008, which tallied with Ms M’s contact on 21 February 2008 (paragraph 45). The National Insurance Contributions Office assumed that the updates included the removal of the erroneous address from the National Insurance Recording System.

The National Insurance Contributions Office also asked their computer system provider to investigate Ms M’s complaint; but they could not establish how the incorrect address had come onto the system as too much time had passed for their provider to be able to restore the records. The National Insurance Contributions Office concluded that it was likely that the incorrect address had been reported to the National Insurance Recording System via the ‘CID interface’, probably from the tax credit or child benefit systems. They said that the National Insurance Recording System was holding the correct data but the incorrect address was still reflected on the ADD system (paragraph 55). The National Insurance Contributions Office would, therefore, need to contact the Department for Work and Pensions’ Customer Information Systems’ Live Services for the incorrect data to be removed. (The National Insurance Contributions Office told us that they contacted Customer Information Systems’ Live Services about this on 21 July 2008, but Customer Information Systems’ Live Services told them that the incorrect address was no longer live, so they took no further action.)

On 4 August 2008 the National Insurance Contributions Office wrote to Ms M’s Member of Parliament. They said that they had carried out an in-depth investigation and found that on 19 December 2007 Ms M’s address had been amended incorrectly (to Mr A’s address), but it had been changed back to the correct address the same day. They said that, because the incorrect address had been removed from the computer system the same day, they could not find out how the change had happened but they ‘assumed’ that an amendment had been made to another department’s computer system which, in turn, had updated their system.
The National Insurance Contributions Office said that there was no way of establishing which government agency was responsible for the incorrect change to Ms M’s address. They apologised and said that they accepted that this was very unsatisfactory, but said they had done all they could to find out what had happened. The Member wrote to Ms M, updating her on what had happened and enclosing a copy of the National Insurance Contributions Office’s letter.

According to the National Insurance Contributions Office’s records, Ms M’s Member of Parliament also telephoned them about how the wrong address had come to be on Ms M’s account. In response to that further enquiry, the National Insurance Contributions Office wrote to the Member of Parliament addressing the questions she had asked. They confirmed that the Tax Credit Office did not automatically tell a customer when an amendment had been made to their account. They said that the Tax Credit Office had told them that Mr A’s address had been used only in respect of Ms M’s joint claim with Mr A, as explained in their letter of 12 March 2008. (This was wrong; the Tax Credit Office had sent Ms M’s annual declaration and renewal for her single claim to Mr A in June 2007.) Finally, the National Insurance Contributions Office said they were unable to say for certain that the update on 19 December 2007 had been a clerical error, but it was likely. They offered an assurance that Mr A’s address had been removed from Ms M’s National Insurance and tax credit accounts.

Child Support Agency

The Child Support Agency replied to Ms M’s Member of Parliament explaining briefly how the Department for Work and Pensions’ Customer Information System worked. They said that the Customer Information System, which had replaced the Departmental Central Index, had amended the Child Support Agency’s records on 19 December 2006, changing Ms M’s address to that of Mr A. They said that the address information had been supplied to their system by the National Insurance Contributions Office. They said that, as a result, they had sent a letter meant for Ms M to Mr A’s address, which meant that Mr A had received information about Ms M and her ex-husband (who was not Mr A). They said that, once this error had come to light (when Ms M telephoned them on 11 October 2007), they had corrected their records immediately and this, in turn, had updated the Customer Information System. They said they had agreed an additional security measure with Ms M. The Child Support Agency said that they had contacted Ms M about that, and said that they would support any application for a late appeal, if Ms M wished to challenge the change to her child support maintenance. (Because Ms M had not received the letter intended for her, she had missed the deadline for appealing against the reduction in her child support maintenance.)

The Child Support Agency went on to say that they had no reason to doubt the information supplied to them by the Customer Information System and that the matter of redress was the responsibility of the government agency that had made the error. They said that if the government agency responsible did not resolve the matter to Ms M’s satisfaction, she could take the matter to the Information Commissioner. (Ms M told us that she did approach the Information Commissioner’s Office but they were unable to help because, by then, the incorrect data had been corrected.) The Child Support Agency accepted, however, that they had delayed providing Ms M with a copy of the decision reducing her child support maintenance. They apologised for this and said that they would send her £25 in recognition of that.

Ms M made a late appeal against the reduction in child support maintenance from her ex‑husband. This was successful. The Child Support Agency added the additional maintenance due to her as a result of her appeal to the arrears already owed by her ex-husband.

Department for Work and Pensions – Jobcentre Plus

Jobcentre Plus replied to Ms M’s Member of Parliament, explaining that they had checked all of Jobcentre Plus’s computer system records going back to 2005, and had found no evidence that Jobcentre Plus had changed Ms M’s address details. Jobcentre Plus said that HM Revenue & Customs had told them that Ms M’s address had been changed ‘as part of an overnight update process between two of our computer systems and as such there is no auditable record of the event having taken place’.

Ms M approaches the Ombudsman

Ms M, on reading the explanations and assurances provided by the various agencies involved and finding them to be unsatisfactory, asked her Member of Parliament to refer the matter to the Ombudsman.