Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a housing benefit underpayment that was created in error. This is because there is insufficient evidence of injustice.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Ms X, says the Council offered a refund for a housing benefit underpayment and then refused the refund because it was a false underpayment. Ms X says she had made plans for the money and wants what is rightfully hers.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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 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))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Ms X and the Council. This includes the Housing benefit decision letter and the complaint correspondence. I also considered our Assessment Code and comments Ms X made in reply to a draft of this decision.

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My assessment

4. Ms X stopped receiving housing benefit in 2021 because she started to receive help with her rent through Universal Credit. She continued to receive council tax support (CTS) from the Council.
5. In November 2022 the Council told Ms X it had reassessed her housing benefit/council tax support from September 2022. The decision letter, which was 172 pages long, then detailed her housing benefit from 2004 and said there was an underpayment of £52,532. The underpayment occurred because the system picked up a random period and re-awarded housing benefit payments she had already received. The system paid £52,532 into her rent account. In late December Ms X received a letter showing she had a rent credit of £52,532. Ms X says she checked with a rent officer and was told the credit was correct.
6. When Ms X tried to claim the refund a rent officer contacted the benefits team to check if the underpayment was correct. The Council then realised the error and cancelled the underpayment. This meant there was no money to refund to Ms X. The Council explained what had happened to Ms X and apologised.
7. Ms X says she made plans to spend the money and does not accept there was a systems error. She says her housing benefit has been wrong since 2004 and she thinks the underpayment was correcting these historic mistakes. She says her rent account is not in arrears only because she has been making rent payments to top up the benefit.
8. There was an error because the system wrongly re-awarded payments of housing benefit Ms X had already received. The officer only input information to amend the child benefit, for the CTS, from September 2022. The information the officer added could not have led to a reassessment of the claim from 2004. This would have required the Council to add information from 2004. If Ms X thought she had been underpaid at any time from 2004 to 2021 she could have used her appeal rights. Ms X wants us to check her entitlement from 2004 but that is not necessary; this is because there is nothing to suggest this was anything other than an error and, as I have said, any concerns she was being underpaid should have been dealt with at the time.
9. I appreciate Ms X thought she was going to get a large sum of money and says this was confirmed when she queried it. Ms X has explained she made plans for how she would spend it. I acknowledge Ms X’s disappointment but she has not suffered a financial loss, the underpayment was quickly resolved and the Council apologised and explained what had happened. For these reasons there is not enough injustice to require an investigation.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate this complaint because there is insufficient evidence of injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman