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
- 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.
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))
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because there is no evidence that the Council’s actions caused her an injustice.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman