North Lincolnshire Council (24 009 850)
Category : Benefits and tax > Housing benefit and council tax benefit
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 02 Dec 2024
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the recovery of a housing benefit overpayment. Mr X used his right to appeal to the tribunal. We cannot look at matters already considered by a tribunal. As we are not investigating the core of the complaint, we will not consider closely related matters.
The complaint
- Mr X complains the Council is wrongly seeking recovery of overpaid housing benefit. He says the Council is responsible for the overpayment as it did not provide appropriate support during his foster child’s transition to adulthood.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant and references to correspondence by the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mr X says the Council is wrongly seeking recovery action for overpaid housing benefit. Mr X used his right to appeal this matter to the tribunal. The tribunal said it was Mr X’s responsibility to maintain the housing benefit claim and the overpayment was not created by local authority error. The tribunal decided the overpayment was recoverable. For the reason in paragraph 2, we cannot investigate whether the Council should be recovering the overpayment from Mr X.
- Mr X says the Council is responsible for the overpayment of housing benefit. He says the Council did not provide appropriate support during his foster child’s transition to adulthood, causing the overpayment. We cannot separate and investigate this point independently as it is directly linked to the matter decided by the tribunal.
- Mr X complains the Council is not progressing his complaint to stage 3. We do not investigate complaints about complaint procedures if we are unable to deal with the core issue in the complaint.
Final decision
- We cannot investigate Mr X’s complaint because a tribunal has decided the underlying matter including its cause. We will not separately investigate the way the Council considered Mr X’s complaint.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman