Summary: We will not investigate Miss B’s complaint about the Council’s delay in telling her she was not able to bid for social housing and about delay in the Council’s complaint process. This is because the injustice she has suffered is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

The complaint

1. The complainant, Miss B, complained that the Council failed to tell her until 2019 she was not able to bid for social housing and about delay in the Council’s complaint process.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. 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)
4. We investigate complaints about councils and certain other bodies. Where an individual, organisation or private company is providing services on behalf of a council, for example as part of the housing allocations process, we can investigate complaints about the actions of these providers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 25(7), as amended)
5. 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, or
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. I have considered the information Miss B provided and the decisions on complaints we upheld against the Council in 2019/20. I have given Miss B an opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

7. In late 2015 Miss B applied to join the housing register. The Council placed her application into band D. When it responded to Miss B's complaint the Council said she could in theory at that time have placed a bid for a property under its working household scheme. But the Council said it withdrew that scheme in April 2016. Miss B said the Council did not tell her until 2019 about her ineligibility to bid because her application was in band D rather than in a higher priority band. The bidding system allowed her to continue to place bids.
8. Miss B provided evidence to the Council of an invitation for her to view a property in 2018. She told us several of her bids were shortlisted in the top ten bids. She complained that, in its initial response to her complaint, the Council overlooked information she had provided.
9. In its final response to Miss B’s complaint the Council said there was no possibility Miss B would have received a legitimate offer of a social housing property after April 2016. That was because, as a band D applicant, it would not have invited her to view one of its own properties. If she had bid for a housing association property and was at the top of the shortlist, the Council said it would not have verified her application. It said the property she had viewed in 2018 was a housing association property.
10. The Council has apologised to Miss B for the length of time it took to address and respond to her complaint at the final stage of its complaint process. Miss B explained her reasons for escalating her complaint to this stage by email in early November 2019. But the Council says its customer care team did not receive this email or her follow up emails. The Council has not been able to establish conclusively what happened to Miss B’s emails. The Council said it believes her emails went into the junk email folder for some reason. It says its customer care team has now implemented a weekly check of the junk mail folder inbox to prevent the same thing happening again.
11. Miss B told us the Council’s delay caused her anxiety so she feels the Council should compensate her.
12. Miss B has been aware of the bidding issue for more than 12 months before she contacted us. But in this case there is a good reason to exercise discretion to consider her complaint. That is because she has been taking her complaint through the Council’s complaint process and she experienced significant delay before she received the Council’s final response.
13. The Council’s system should have prevented Miss B from bidding for properties from April 2016. The fact that she was able to place bids and received an invitation to view a property must have raised her expectation that she might receive an offer if she took the time to make bids. Miss B subsequently experienced delay in the Council’s complaint process. It is not in doubt this would have caused her anxiety. But there is no evidence any fault by the Council has prevented Miss B from receiving an offer of social housing. The Council has not said it placed Miss B’s application into the wrong band. As a band D applicant, it should not have been possible for her to make bids for properties. The delay in the Council’s complaint process did not mean she would have made a successful bid sooner so she would have been able to move. So the injustice Miss B has suffered is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
14. There is no indication from the complaints we upheld against the Council in 2019/20 that the complaint process delay Miss B experienced highlights a wider systemic issue within the Council.

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Final decision

15. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because the injustice Miss B has suffered is not significant enough to justify our involvement.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman