Complaints about rent account problems
This fact sheet is aimed primarily at council tenants who are experiencing problems with their rent account and may be considering making a complaint to the Ombudsman.
I have a problem with my rent account. Can the Ombudsman help me?
- In some cases, yes. If it concerns charges on your account that you do not think should be there, we might be able to look at your complaint.
- If it concerns your entitlement to housing benefit which has caused you to have rent arrears you may be able to take your complaint to an independent appeal tribunal (see separate fact sheet (B1) on complaining about housing benefit and council tax benefit claims).
- If the council has taken you to court for rent arrears and obtained a possession order but you do not agree with the court’s decision we could not consider your complaint.
How do I complain?
- Unless the matter is urgent, you should normally complain to the council first. Councils often have more than one stage in their complaints procedure and you will usually have to complete all stages before we will look at your complaint.
- Then, if you are unhappy with the outcome, or the council is taking too long to look into the matter – we think 12 weeks is reasonable – you can complain to us.
- Where the matter is urgent or you are particularly at risk, we can usually look into your complaint even if you have not been through the council’s complaints procedure first. This could be, for example, if you have been threatened with court action for rent arrears that you do not think you owe. You should explain this when you contact us.
- You should normally make your complaint to us within 12 months of realising that the council has done something wrong.
- To complain to the Ombudsman phone our Advice Team on 0300 061 0614 or 0845 602 1983 (8.30am to 5.00pm, Mondays to Fridays). You will be able to discuss your complaint with one of our advisers. You can text us on 0762 480 4299.
- You can complete an online complaint form.
If you can consider my complaint what will the Ombudsman look for?
We consider whether the council has done something wrong in the way it dealt with your rent account which has caused you problems. Some of the issues we can look at are if:
- you are being charged on your rent account for a garage that you gave up some time ago
- you are being charged for cleaning/caretaking but you live in a house and do not receive the service
- the council has not credited rent payments which you made to your rent account causing you to have arrears, or
- the council has wrongly treated an overpayment of housing benefit as rent arrears.
What happens if the Ombudsman finds the council was at fault?
We can recommend that the council takes action to put the matter right. This depends on what the complaint is about, but often we will ask the council to:
- carry out an audit of your rent account to ensure that all payments you have made have been credited to your account;
- remove all inappropriate charges from your account and backdate this to the relevant date; and
- write off arrears which have accrued because of the council’s fault.
We can also recommend that the council:
- pays compensation. The amount we ask for will depend on how you have been affected by what has gone wrong. Where we find that there has been unreasonable delay in dealing with the issue you have raised, we usually recommend a payment to recognise the anxiety and inconvenience caused. If you have got into arrears because of the delay, and the council has threatened to evict you, we may ask for compensation for the additional distress, and
- improves procedures so that the same problems do not occur again.
Examples of some complaints we have considered
Ms A complained that the council had failed to set up a rent account after she did a mutual exchange with another tenant. Ms A paid rent which she understood was going into a holding account until her new account was set up. The council accepted that it took too long to set up the new account and that the rent payments which should have gone into the holding account were paid into Ms A’s former tenancy account in error. It agreed to review its procedures so that such errors would not be made in future. It also paid compensation of £150 to Ms A.
Mr T complained that he was being charged a higher rent than his neighbour who had the same size of property. At the time the council calculated its rents according to a points system based on the attributes of the property. Mr T was wrongly being charged for a kitchen/diner when he only had a kitchen. The council agreed he had been recharged in error and agreed to refund the total charge which amounted to £435.
Other sources of information
Our fact sheets give some general information about the most common type of complaints we receive but they cannot cover every situation. If you are not sure whether we can look into your complaint, please phone 0300 061 0614.
The Local Government Ombudsmen provide a free, independent and impartial service. We consider complaints about the administrative actions of councils and some other authorities. We cannot question what a council has done simply because someone does not agree with it. If we find something has gone wrong, such as poor service, service failure, delay or bad advice and that a person has suffered as a result the Ombudsmen aim to get it put right by recommending a suitable remedy.
Date Updated: 11/08/11