29 A woman with MS was so weakened by her illness that the Social Tribunal found that she should be granted 24-hour assistance with looking after her young daughter, i.e. there had to be a helper in the house whenever her daughter was at home. After almost three weeks, the local authority still had not provided the assistance. The woman’s mother lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman, who forwarded it to the local authority as a request from the complainant that the authority speed up the assistance. The assistance was finally provided six weeks after the woman was granted 24-hour assistance. A so-called ‘speeding-up request’ is a tool frequently used by the Ombudsman, typically in cases which have not progressed for several months. In this case, the Ombudsman acted sooner because the woman was in acute need of help. A young man took over his father’s car and converted it to increase the engine power. However, he was stopped by the police, who impounded the car because registration duty had only been paid according to the car’s original engine size. After a p ­ reliminary ­examination of the car, the Central Customs and Tax A ­ dministration estimated that the family must pay an a ­ dditional DKK 37,000 of registration duty due to the conversion. The father offered to pay immediately so that his son could get his car back. How­­ever, the offer was rejected and the father was also told that he had to pay DKK 9,000 for the Central Customs and Tax Administration’s storage of the car. The father’s lawyer lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman because the Central Customs and Tax Administration believed he could not appeal to the normal appeal body, the National Tax Tribunal. However, the Ombudsman did not immediately agree. He forwarded the case to the National Tax Tribunal and wrote to the lawyer that the father could re-contact him after receiving a reply from the Tribunal. After two months, the car was returned to the son. A Danish firearms licence for a sporting rifle is valid for ten years. Before the expiry of the licence, the police will send the owner a reminder that it is due for renewal if the owner still has the weapon. A man with a sporting rifle was only sent the reminder after his licence had expired. He immediately reacted and ­applied for a renewal, but was nonetheless fined DKK 4,000 because he had owned a rifle without having a licence for approximately five weeks. The Ombudsman sent a number of questions to the police, who immediately cancelled the fine and wrote that an error had been made.

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents