The Adjudicator

By Vijay Kumar

Recognize the citizen taxpayer as master

UK Customs has an independent office of adjudicator to investigate about

++ Mistakes

++ Delays

++ Poor or misleading advice

++ Inappropriate staff behaviour

++ Use of discretion

of the Customs and excise department. They even publish the complaints and the results of their investigation in their web site. In a recent case, the customs department offered a compensation of £250/- . The adjudicator routinely awards compensation to victims of official apathy. During the year 2005-06, the Adjudicator awarded the following payments from the Customs to complainants.

Here is the interesting case:-

Mr and Mrs I cut short their holiday abroad because Mrs I was taken ill. On arrival back in the UK, Customs and Excise stopped the couple and searched their vehicle. Mr I subsequently complained about the distress caused by the search and claimed that the officers had damaged some of the contents of his vehicle.

Customs and Excise were unable to identify which of their officers, if any, had been involved in the search; nor whether any other agency had carried out the search. On that basis, they rejected the complaint.

We upheld this complaint.

We asked Customs and Excise to investigate matters again. This time, the investigation established both that Customs and Excise had indeed carried out the search and also that they could identify the officers involved. They offered MrI £250 in recognition of their previous failure to investigate matters properly and the distress that this caused.

They also agreed to pay for repair or replacement of the damaged items, even though they were by no means certain that their officers were responsible for the damage. We considered that, in the circumstances, Customs and Excise’s offer was both fair and reasonable.

MrI felt able to accept Customs and Excise’s offer of redress and we were able to settle the complaint by mediation. We were very pleased to note that Customs and Excise used this complaint to review and improve their local procedures.

*‘we’ stands for the Adjudicator’s office.

This is how the citizen should be respected and the government ‘servant’ should be told that he is a ‘servant’ and will be punished if he misbehaves with his master.

The Adjudicator’s offices notices, Given the tendency of those wishing to smuggle illegal material to pose as genuine travellers, it is inevitable that innocent people are sometimes caught up in the operational procedures in place to enforce restrictions. This, in turn, can generate complaints about the attitude of officers.