Northampton Borough Council (05B16773)

Housing benefit                            Maladministration causing injustice

27 June 2007

The complaint

Ms E complained about the Council’s handling of her housing and council tax benefit claims between November 2004 and March 2006. She said that the Council:

• delayed excessively in processing benefit claims and appeals; and
• pursued recovery of rent and council tax arrears while benefit claims and appeals were outstanding.

The Ombudsman’s view

The Ombudsman upheld Ms E’s complaints, saying the Council wrongly took repossession action through the courts and instructed bailiffs to collect council tax arrears from Ms E while her benefits entitlement was unresolved. He commented that the case highlighted serious failings in the Council’s administration of both housing and council tax benefit and in the recovery of rent and council tax arrears. The Ombudsman said:

“On this occasion I consider the Council failed to meet … basic standards of good administrative practice. It made a series of errors in administering Ms E’s benefit claims and in deciding to take recovery action while these claims were unresolved.”

What went wrong

The Council’s faults included:

• delaying seven months in processing an appeal;
• failing to pay the correct amount of benefit;
• delaying for 10 months in processing a second appeal request;
• failing to carry out an assessment;
• failing to act on information provided;
• failing for seven weeks to give any attention to a further claim based on a change of circumstances;
• taking over seven months to amend the claim to take account of Ms E’s receipt of incapacity benefit;
• missing opportunities to clarify the claim and put it into payment correctly;
• failing to check its systems sufficiently in reviewing her entitlement; and
• not having proper liaison between the housing department and benefit services.

All of the above failings took place against the backdrop of Ms E facing the threat of eviction as a result of the Council’s decision to pursue recovery action through the courts. The knowledge that this action was proceeding should have led the Council to give extra care and urgency to the processing of the benefit claims. But it gave no extra priority to resolving the benefit claims, and even failed to comply with an order of the county court to resolve the benefit position as a matter of urgency.

The Council did not adhere to its policy of making “every effort” to resolve housing benefit entitlement prior to the matter coming to court, instead putting the onus on Ms E to resolve her outstanding claims. It then compounded these failings by referring the council tax account to the bailiffs without considering – in accordance with its policy for collecting debt from vulnerable council tax payers – whether this action was justified.

Outcome

The Council agreed to:

• apologise to Ms E;
• write off an outstanding housing benefit overpayment of £79.46;
• write off an outstanding balance on Ms E’s council tax account of £187.39;
• pay Ms E one week’s housing and council tax benefit, or else pay financial compensation to the equivalent value;
• pay additional compensation of £1,865 to Ms E (£2,500 minus the amounts already written off on her rent and council tax accounts).

The Ombudsman welcomed the Council’s agreement to his proposed remedy, and the commitment it gave to improve its procedures so as to avoid a repeat of the failings highlighted during this investigation.

Date Updated: 13/01/09