London Borough of Bexley (19 013 776)
Category : Benefits and tax > Housing benefit and council tax benefit
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 17 Jan 2020
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: Mr X complains about the way the Council dealt with his tenant’s rent liability. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint because part of the complaint is out of time and there is no evidence of fault by the Council.
The complaint
- Mr X complains about the way the Council dealt with his tenant’s rent liability.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
- 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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:
- it is unlikely we would find fault.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I have considered the complainant’s and Council’s comments and the complainant has had an opportunity to comment on the draft decision.
What I found
- Mr X is a landlord who accepted a Ms Y as a tenant in April 2011 under a Council scheme which ensured that housing benefit was paid direct to the landlord.
- Mr X says that he accepted her as a tenant because he understood that the rent would be guaranteed. The Council says the rent was never guaranteed.
- In the absence of any evidence which shows the rent was guaranteed, the Ombudsman would not pursue this aspect of the complaint.
- The Council says that the housing benefit ended in October 2017. Mr X says that he was not told the housing benefit had ended but I consider that he would reasonably have discovered this within a month or so. His complaint about not being notified is therefore out of time.
- Mr X eventually evicted Ms Y for rent arrears in 2019. I am not persuaded that this was the result of fault by the Council as the rent was not guaranteed and the housing benefit was paid direct to him for the relevant period.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman