Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about the priority the Council awarded on its housing register because the Council has taken appropriate action to remedy any injustice caused.

The complaint

1. Ms X complained the Council wrongly considered rent arrears when deciding not to accept her on to the housing register in 2020, and wrongly placed her in band E as a result of the arrears when she made a new application in 2022. As a result, she says she had to live in private rented accommodation where she suffered harassment and antisocial behaviour from neighbours.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Ms X.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Ms X applied to the Council’s housing register in 2020. The Council did not accept her application because she had rent arrears relating to a previous property. In its complaint response, the Council said this was in line with its allocations scheme at the time. It also said, when she queried the outcome, an officer told her she could apply for an exception to be made, but she did not do so.
6. Ms X made a new application in 2022. The Council accepted the application but placed her in band E (a low priority) due to the rent arrears. When Ms X challenged this, the Council accepted the debt was old and it was now too late to enforce it. It therefore agreed to change the priority to band D. After a further challenge, it agreed to back-date her priority date to 2020. This means that when she was bidding for a property she would be treated as though the application was accepted when she first made it.
7. Ms X is unhappy the Council’s actions meant she was not able to bid for two years. She accepted a new property in April 2023. The Council confirmed that, due to the demand for housing, she would not have been rehoused any earlier if it had accepted her application in 2020.
8. We will not investigate this complaint further. The Council took appropriate action to address the issue with the old debt, and we could not achieve anything more by further investigation.
9. Ms X also complained the Council did not help her when she reported concerns about her private rented accommodation. The Council considered her concerns in 2022. It gave her advice about her legal rights. It also said it had identified some issues that it could pursue using an informal notice, but Ms X told it she was moving elsewhere.
10. We will not investigate this complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault to justify our involvement. Further, Ms X has since moved to alternative accommodation so there is nothing worthwhile we could achieve by investigating.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because the Council has taken appropriate action to remedy the injustice caused by any fault in the way it considered her housing register application. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the way it considered reports about her private rented accommodation and nothing worthwhile we could achieve by investigating that.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman