Summary: The Ombudsman found no fault on Ms Y’s complaint of the Council delaying dealing with her claims for housing benefit and council tax reduction. The Council requested further information from her before it could process them. Her complaint about it assessing their income, and its decision to end their claims, are outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction as she had a right to appeal them to a statutory tribunal.

The complaint

1. Ms Y complains the Council:
1. Delayed dealing with her claims for housing benefit and council tax reduction between April and November 2018;
2. Wrongly assessed her income; and
3. Wrongly decided to end both claims.
2. As a result, her landlord threatened her with eviction for not paying the rent, she could not pay her daughter’s university fees, and struggled feeding her children, all of which caused her and her family a great deal of stress and anxiety.

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What I have investigated

3. I have not investigated complaint b) and c) for reasons set out in the paragraph at the end of this draft decision.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)
5. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
6. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a tribunal. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
7. The Social Entitlement Chamber (also known as the Social Security Appeal Tribunal) is a tribunal that considers housing benefit appeals. (The Social Entitlement Chamber of the First Tier Tribunal)

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered all the information Ms Y provided, as well as the response from the Council to my enquiries, a copy of which I sent her. I sent a copy of my draft decision to Ms Y and the Council. I considered their responses.

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What I found

9. Ms Y and her family rent their home from the Council. She complains the Council delayed deciding her claim for housing benefit and council tax reduction (the benefits) she made in May 2018. During the delay, she was threatened with eviction as she could not pay the rent. The Council also took enforcement action against her for unpaid council tax. She is unhappy because the delays, and the decision to end her housing benefit, impacted mainly on her 2 children as she struggled to feed them and pay her daughter’s university fees.
10. The following are key dates:

• December 2017: Ms Y made an application for benefits (application 1).
• March 2018: Her husband appealed the decision to refuse application 1.
• April: The Council sent his appeal to the tribunal service which has yet to be consider it. In response to my enquiries, the Council explained this was a complicated case with more than 900 pages of evidence and it is being listed for hearing.
• May: Ms Y sent the Council an application for benefits (application 2). On it, she said one of the children was disabled.
• June: The Council wrote asking her for the information/evidence requested by the form. This included documentary evidence of her husband’s business rent, evidence of cleaning costs, bank statements from all accounts, invoices from April, as well as a copy of the tenancy agreement.

The following day, Ms Y sent a copy of her husband’s rent invoice (dated the same day), a copy of the business premises licence agreement (dated early April) and one from 2016, copies of 2 bank account statements for 2017 and 1 from 2018, and provided some information about her husband’s income, along with invoices. The Council said what she sent was incomplete.

• July: The Council interviewed her husband and said in its chronology that it asked for further information. Nine days after the interview, the records show Ms Y sent copies of their passports. The Council said it did not receive the final evidence needed until 25 July. This was 6 days after she provided copies of the passports.
• August: The Council did a provisional assessment of her claim. It awarded benefit back to May.
• September: Following a review of the claim, the Council ended it because of a change in their income. Ms Y asked it to reconsider the decision as she challenged the income calculation. Her husband asked the Council to adjourn the court hearing for the recovery of unpaid council tax.
• November: The decision to end the claim was upheld. Ms Y wanted to appeal this decision, but the Council refused to send it to the tribunal service. This was because her appeal was the same as that made by her partner.
• January 2019: The Council sent her its stage 2 complaint response. This noted they had made no payment to the council tax liability. It explained housing benefit is means tested and accepted it took longer than usual to decide application 2. This was because of the need for further information from her and her partner. It needed information about his self-employed income and had to verify information provided. It also explained decisions about eligibility for council tax reduction are made alongside housing benefit decisions. This means a delay processing a housing benefit claim also delays the processing of a claim for council tax reduction.
• August: The eviction case against them was adjourned as Ms Y made a payment to the Council.

11. The Council took enforcement action to recover unpaid council tax because she was responsible for paying it and had not done so. Recovery action included going to court for a liability order. The Council placed further action on hold until the outcome of the appeal on application 1 is known.
12. In response to my draft decision, Ms Y sent a copy of a Council letter she received in December. This told her about a court hearing in January 2020 about its application for a council tax liability order. It noted she asked for a 2-month adjournment. It told her there was no need for her to attend court as it sought an adjournment until February. The letter explained it still needed to see her student exemption certificates. The adjourned hearing date means meant she has enough time to get these and provide them to the Council.
13. While it accepted it has a guideline of 30 days deciding an application for benefits, not all claims can be decided within this time period. This is because the Council may have to ask a claimant for further information, for example, before it can decide it. The initial request for information was sent 33 days after receiving the application but, the Council argued this was not a delay.

Analysis

14. I make the following findings on this complaint:
1. Usually a claim for housing benefit is effective when a council receives a fully completed application which includes all the information and evidence requested on it. Where information and evidence is not provided, the claim is incomplete and a council asks the claimant to provide what is missing. A claim is usually, therefore, made from the date a council receives a fully completed claim form.
2. I am not satisfied the Council was at fault for the time taken to process application 2. This is because not all the evidence/information originally needed was sent by Ms Y.
3. There is no evidence showing what further documents/evidence the Council wanted from Ms Y after she sent documents and information in response to its request following receipt of her application.
4. The Council went on to interview her husband, but it is unclear why. While the Council says it asked for further information at this point, the interview note does not show this. The box on the form for recording documents/information required from a claimant, and the date this is required by, is blank.
5. I also note Ms Y provided a copy of their passports just over a week after her husband’s interview. It is unclear whether this was the further information the Council wanted and if it was, why the Council had not asked for it sooner. On balance, the fact she sent the Council copies shows this was in response to some request, even though evidence of the request was not provided.
6. The Council decided application 2 in August 2018, shortly after her husband’s interview and receipt of the copy passports.
7. Although Ms Y complains the Council could have decided her claim sooner, it decided she was not eligible for benefit in September. This means even if there had been fault by the Council, Ms Y suffered no significant injustice as it decided she was never eligible for benefits.

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Final decision

15. The Ombudsman found no fault on Mr Y’s complaint against the Council.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

16. I did not investigate complaint b) and c). This is because Ms Y had the right to appeal the decisions about income and ending the claims to a tribunal. I note the Council refused to pass her appeal to the tribunal because it was identical to the complicated large appeal it submitted to the tribunal service on behalf of her husband. As it sent her husband’s appeal to the tribunal, this means the issues she would have raised in her own appeal will be considered by it anyway when it sits to hear the appeal for application 1.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman