Johanne Brøns Marcussen Fireman The village of Ladby 28 CASE NO. 17/02084 CASE NO. 17/01555 A general concern about how the national church is run made a man write to the Ombudsman with vari­ ous suggestions on the management of the national church, which ought to be more businesslike, among other things. It appeared from the man’s enquiry that he had already corresponded with the Ministry of Ec­ clesiastical Affairs and had also presented his views to Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Affairs Committee. Is it fair that a child’s income affects the mother’s housing benefit? A 16-year-old boy raised that ques­ tion in a complaint to the Ombudsman. The boy found that the rules within this field prevented him from earning his own money and getting work experience. The Ombudsman informed the man about how the Ombudsman works and that above all the Ombuds­ man monitors whether decisions made by authori­ ties towards citizens are correct. The material which the man had sent to the Ombudsman did not give the Ombudsman grounds for taking any action in the matter. The Ombudsman himself determines whether a complaint offers sufficient grounds for investiga­ tion. This is stipulated in section 16(1) of the Om­ budsman Act. The Ombudsman wrote to the 16-year-old that he could not help him with his complaint because the rules were based on legislation. However, the Om­ budsman also sent on the boy’s complaint to the Min­ istry of Employment so that the Ministry would be informed of the boy’s dissatisfaction with the legis­ lation. The Minister for Employment then wrote, in person, to the boy that the Government had just proposed changing the housing benefit rules on exactly the point with which the boy was dissatisfied. The Ombudsman cannot investigate complaints con­ cerning Parliament or the content of legislation passed by Parliament, nor does he otherwise engage in matters concerning legislative policy. CASE NO. 17/01103 A practising lawyer complained on behalf of a client that so far the Tax Appeals Agency had spent almost four years processing an appeal case about reim­bur­se­ment of the client’s legal costs. The Ombudsman sent the complaint on to the Tax Appeals Agency on 17 March 2017. If the Agency made a decision before 1 May, it was not to take any further action. Failing this, the Ombudsman would ask for a statement about the case processing time. The Tax Appeals Agency made a decision on 25 April, and the case was therefore concluded without a statement from the Ombudsman. Concerning case processing times the Ombudsman sometimes asks ‘conditionally’ for a statement – meaning that the authority need not spend time replying to the Ombudsman if a decision is imminent. CASE NOS. 17/03731 AND 17/03735 Two citizens complained independently of each other about the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) charging VAT on licence fees. It had been in the press that the European Court of Justice had established in a case about Czech radio licence fees that licence fees were not covered by the VAT rules. Therefore, the two citizens were of the opinion that also in Den­ mark it was illegal to charge VAT on licence fees and that they and other licence fee payers were owed a large amount of money. The Ombudsman informed them that they would have to write to DR about the questions they had pre­sen­ted in their complaint. In addition, the Ombuds­ man pointed out that it was evident from the press that other licence fee payers considered suing DR – and in that case, the Ombudsman could not investi­ gate the case. The jurisdiction of the Ombudsman does not ex­ tend to the courts of justice. Therefore, it is the Ombudsman’s practice not to investigate cases or queries that are being dealt with by a court or on which a court is expected to make a decision.