Sedgemoor District Council (21 008 964)

Category : Housing > Private housing

Decision : Closed after initial enquiries

Decision date : 09 Nov 2021

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about how the Council dealt with repair issues in her private rented property. This is because there is no evidence the Council’s actions caused her an injustice.

The complaint

  1. Ms X complains the Council failed to serve her landlord with an improvement notice to prevent for repairs in her rented property. Ms X says because of the Council’s failure her landlord has been able to serve her with a notice of eviction meaning she will become homeless.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

The Ombudsman investigates complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact 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 or may decide not to continue with an investigation if we decide any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6))

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

  1. I considered information provided by the complainant.
  2. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

Back to top

My assessment

  1. The Council wrote to Ms X’s landlord about repair issues in the property without service any formal notice requiring work to be done. The Council says the issues were resolved and so no further action was necessary. Ms X’s landlord then served Ms X with a notice seeking possession under section 21 of the 1996 Housing Act.
  2. Landlords cannot serve a section 21 notice seeking possession within 6 months of being served an improvement notice by a council regarding disrepair issues. However, a section 21 notice can still be used if the landlord plans to sell the property.
  3. In this case Ms X’s landlord says they want to sell the property which is why a section 21 notice has been served. Therefore even if the Council should have served Ms X’s landlord with an improvement notice this would not have necessarily protected her from being evicted.
  4. We cannot show that any fault by the Council has caused Ms X an injustice. This is because her landlord may still have been able to proceed with an eviction even if the Council had taken more formal action regarding the repairs. Therefore we will not investigate this complaint.

Back to top

Final decision

  1. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is no evidence that the Council’s actions caused her an injustice.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

Print this page

LGO logogram

Review your privacy settings

Required cookies

These cookies enable the website to function properly. You can only disable these by changing your browser preferences, but this will affect how the website performs.

View required cookies

Analytical cookies

Google Analytics cookies help us improve the performance of the website by understanding how visitors use the site.
We recommend you set these 'ON'.

View analytical cookies

In using Google Analytics, we do not collect or store personal information that could identify you (for example your name or address). We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data. Google has developed a tool to help you opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Privacy settings