Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint that the Council did not provide information about the allocations policy when it helped the complainant in 2015. This is because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Ms X, says the Council should have told her, in 2015, that the Rent Deposit Scheme would make her eligible for band two on the housing register. Ms X wants the Council to backdate her housing application to 2016.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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 an investigation if we believe it is unlikely we would find fault. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I read the complaint and Ms X’s complaints to the Council. I considered the Council’s responses, a letter it sent to Ms X in 2015 and the allocation policies of 2013 and 2018. I also considered comments Ms X made in reply to a draft of this decision.

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What I found

Allocations policy 2013 and 2018

4. The policy says people can only join the housing register if they have lived in the borough for five years or once they have been working in the borough for a year.
5. The Council places people in band two on the housing register if they had been helped to avoid homelessness through the Rent Deposit Scheme. People can view the allocations policy on the Council’s website.

What happened

6. Ms X moved to the borough in 2013. In February 2015 she applied to join the housing register. The Council rejected the application because she had not lived in the borough for five years and did not meet the employment condition. The Council sent a letter which explained the basic qualifying rules and signposted her to the website for more information.
7. In February 2015 the Council helped Ms X avoid homelessness through the Rent Deposit Scheme. In November 2015 Ms X started work within the borough.
8. In December 2019 Ms X joined the housing register. Ms X says the Council should backdate the application to November 2016 because it did not tell her that she would qualify for band two because she had used the Rent Deposit Scheme. In response to the complaint the Council explained that its duty had been to help prevent homelessness and it had given Ms X information about the housing register. The Council declined to backdate the application.
9. Ms X says she thought she was adequately housed which is why she did not apply to the register before 2019. She said she would have applied in 2016 if the Council had told her she would qualify for band two. Ms X says the Council should have told her about qualifying via the Rent Deposit Scheme even though she did not qualify at the time. She says she would then have known it would be worth re-applying to the register in the future. She says the Council knew she was likely to qualify for the housing register in the future.

Assessment

10. I will not start an investigation because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council.
11. The Council helped Ms X in 2015 through its Rent Deposit Scheme. It also told Ms X about the basic qualifying conditions for the housing register. The Council gave Ms X enough information for her to see that she would qualify in 2018 or after she had been working for a year. It also signposted her to the website where she could find further information about the bands. Once Ms X had been working for a year (in November 2016) she could have checked the website, or sought advice, to see if she would have priority on the housing register.
12. The Council was not required to highlight issues that may apply in the future. When the Council helped Ms X in 2015 she was three years away from meeting the five year rule and it was not known that she would get the job in November. If the Council had referred to the rent deposit eligibility there would have been no guarantee that the rule would still apply when Ms X met the basic qualifying conditions. This is because the allocation policy is periodically reviewed. Ms X says she would have been preferred to have been told about the qualifying route even if it later transpired the policy had changed. However, the Council did tell her about all the qualifying routes by signposting her to the allocations policy and its website.

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Final decision

13. I will not start an investigation because there is insufficient evidence of fault by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman