Summary: Mrs X complained the Council took too long to process her application to join the Housing Register. She also complained the Council didn’t properly consider her circumstances before deciding which priority band to award her.

Finding

The Ombudsman upheld the complaint finding fault causing injustice.

Recommendations

To remedy the injustice to Mrs X the Council has agreed to:

• apologise to Mrs X. Mrs X’s first language is not English. The Council should write to Mrs X in her spoken language or apologise verbally through an interpreter; and
• backdate Mrs X’s priority band date to the date she applied in March 2020.

The Council recognises there is a significant backlog of housing applications and has already acted to address it. This includes:

• appointing seven extra officers in May 2020; and
• evaluating IT system enhancements.

These changes are welcome. However, the Council should also take action to reduce injustice to future applicants.

This fault affects thousands of current and previous applicants. However, we are conscious that amending these applications would be a big task and the Council is already overwhelmed. Furthermore, any attempt to remedy the injustice to current or future applicants will disadvantage those already on the register by comparison. Considering this, our recommendations seek to address the cause of the injustice by reducing the delay. To this end, the Council should within three months of the date of this report:

• produce an action plan setting out how it will get processing of applications down to four to six weeks, with target dates. The action plan should include the dates of regular reports on progress to the relevant Council committee.
• review its Housing Allocations Policy to ensure any delay by the Council does not impact on an applicant’s priority band date.
• The Council should address complaints it receives from other applicants about the impact of this delay in line with our recommendations in this report.

Ombudsman satisfied with Council's response: 14 January 2022

 

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