Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Miss X’s housing. The law prevents us investigating the Council’s actions, as landlord, about damp and mould. The Council properly reached its decision not to give medical priority to Miss X’s social housing application.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council:
1. Has not dealt effectively with damp and mould in her home; and
2. Has wrongly refused to give medical priority to her housing application.
2. Miss X states this means she and her family remain living in poor conditions.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
4. We cannot investigate complaints about the provision or management of social housing by a council acting as a registered social housing provider. (Local Government Act 1974, paragraph 5A schedule 5, as amended)
5. 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)
6. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered information provided by the complainant and copy correspondence from the Council.
8. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

The Council’s management of damp and mould

9. Miss X is a tenant of the Council’s social housing. So as paragraph 4 explained, the law prevents us investigating the Council’s handling of disrepair, damp, mould and other tenancy management matters.

Refusal of medical priority on housing register

10. Miss X says the Council refused medical priority twice, first about two years ago and more recently a refusal in October 2023, which the Council confirmed when it reviewed that decision in February 2024.
11. The restriction in paragraph 5 applies to the decision two years ago. I appreciate Miss X has health problems and can find dealing with written information difficult. However, our service is accessible. I consider Miss X could reasonably have pursued the matter and come to us sooner. Also, events have moved on since then, with Miss X giving the Council more medical information and making a new application for medical priority. So trying to investigate the older decision would not achieve any useful purpose now. Therefore I do not see good enough reason to investigate this late part of the complaint.
12. I have considered the more recent application for medical priority, the Council’s initial decision on that application, the review request and the Council’s review decision.
13. As paragraph 6 explained, the Ombudsman is not an appeal body. It is not our role to decide whether the application should have medical priority. We consider whether the Council properly reached its decision. The most important part of that is the Council’s review decision, which was its final word on the matter.
14. The evidence suggests the Council’s review decision considered all the information the Council had, including information from Miss X and medical professionals who had dealt with her, as well as advice from the Council’s medical adviser. The Council also took account of what its housing allocations policy said about when it could award medical priority. The Council gave reasons for deciding it should not award medical priority. Those reasons related to the Council’s policy and to its understanding of Miss X’s circumstances.
15. The Council followed the expected procedure by reviewing its decision when Miss X requested that. Its medical adviser was involved in line with the Council’s procedure. Overall, the evidence suggests the Council reached its decision properly. Therefore, as paragraph 6 explained, we cannot criticise the decision, albeit Miss X and others can disagree with the decision.

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Final decision

16. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint. The law prevents us considering points related to the Council’s management of its social housing. The Council properly reached its decision to refuse medical priority.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman