Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of Mr Y’s housing benefit. The complaint is late without good enough reason for us to investigate it now.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains on behalf of Mr Y. She says the Council did not take Mr Y’s circumstances into account and wrongly stopped his housing benefit. Miss X says this caused Mr Y financial loss and distress.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. The Council stopped Mr Y’s housing benefit in 2021. However, Miss X says neither she nor Mr Y had any reason to believe until 2025 that the Council’s decision might have been wrong, so Mr Y did not challenge the decision at the time.
7. The Council says its records show in March 2022 Mr Y raised concerns with it about being in rent arrears due to his housing benefit ending. It is therefore reasonable to infer Mr Y was dissatisfied by March 2022 with his housing benefit ending. I recognise Miss X’s complaint to us follows more recent contact with the Department for Work and Pensions, from which she and Mr Y believed the Council had wrongly ended Mr Y’s housing benefit in 2021 based on their new understanding of benefit rules. However, Mr Y did not need detailed understanding of the housing benefit rules or of possible errors to complain to us. He only needed to know something had happened that he was dissatisfied with. Mr Y could reasonably have complained to us within 12 months of March 2022 at the latest.
8. Miss X further complains about the Council’s complaint handling. However, it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because the complaint is late without good enough reason for us to investigate it now.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman