Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council (04C09984)

Housing allocations & Homelessness  Maladministration, but no injustice

21 July 2005

An advice agency complained on behalf of ‘Miss George’ (not her real name for legal reasons) about the Council’s handling of her application for housing. In April 2004 the Council came to the view that it had a statutory duty to secure housing for Miss George and her family, who the Council had found to be homeless. The Council put her on its waiting list but restricted the properties for which she would be considered because of her outstanding debts to the Council. The Council had not offered her any properties.

The Ombudsman’s investigation found that, in its overall efforts to improve housing stock in its area, the Council had overlooked its statutory duty to homeless people. It had failed to ensure that they were awarded sufficient priority through its housing allocations procedure to have a realistic chance of being offered housing compared with other people in the area with a high degree of housing need. The points scheme was changed to remedy that.

The Ombudsman did not consider that restricting the properties for consideration in such cases was unreasonable, and found that it was unlikely that Miss George would have been rehoused earlier if there had been no maladministration.

The Ombudsman found maladministration, but no resulting injustice to the complainant.

Date Published: 19/08/09