Cornwall Council (23 017 624)
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s actions when Miss X presented as homeless in 2020. Any investigation now is unlikely to reach a clear enough view.
The complaint
- Miss X complains the Council did not at first respond properly or help her when she presented as homeless. She states this was frightening and has left her reluctant to seek help.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse effect on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start an investigation if we decide the tests set out in our Assessment Code are not met. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant and copy complaint correspondence from the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- In 2020, Miss X went to the Council reporting she was homeless because of the circumstances in the place she had been living. This statement does not give more details, to protect Miss X’s anonymity. Miss X had a telephone conversation with a Council officer on the day she contacted the Council. Miss X states the officer: said Miss X’s circumstances did not mean she was homeless; commented negatively about Miss X’s disability; and wanted Miss X to return to where she had been living. Miss X says she spent more than five hours by herself in a small room at the Council that day and it was only after another organisation made representations about the circumstances that the Council provided interim accommodation and started dealing with Miss X under its homelessness responsibilities.
- This is a dispute about what was said in a telephone conversation four years ago. When the Council looked at its written records in 2021, it said they showed it had taken Miss X’s case seriously throughout. There are unlikely to be more comprehensive records of the conversation in question now, several years later. It is unlikely we could reach a clear enough view on the balance of probabilities about what was said, and how it was said, to enable us to decide whether the Council was at fault.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman