Summary: Mrs C complained about the Council’s implementation of a series of agreed actions following an investigation of an earlier complaint, which we upheld. We found some limited fault by the Council in its communications with Mrs C, which caused distress. The Council has agreed to provide an apology for this, which we consider a fair outcome.

The complaint

1. Mrs C complained about the Council’s implementation of a series of actions which it agreed following an investigation completed in June 2024 (case 23 012 566 - Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman). Mrs C said it had:

• delivered the actions later than the timescale it had agreed;
• used the wrong date to backdate ‘Band A’ housing priority following a review of her housing needs;
• had not completed adequate checks to see if she had missed out on potential suitable housing following its re-prioritisation of her housing need to ‘Band A’;
• had not taken enough action to consider her potential homelessness.

2. Mrs C said the above faults contributed to her continuing to live in housing unsuitable for her needs. It has added to her distress, reinforcing her feeling the Council did not understand the impact of her current housing on her day-to-day life.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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)
4. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. Before issuing this decision statement I considered:

• Mrs C’s complaint to the Ombudsman and any supporting information provided;
• correspondence exchanged between Mrs C and the Council following our earlier investigation;
• records gathered during that earlier investigation and further information provided by the Council;
• any relevant law, Government guidance, Council policy or Ombudsman guidance referred to below.

7. I also gave Mrs C and the Council a chance to comment on a draft version of this decision statement and provide any additional information they considered relevant to its content. I took account of any responses they provided before issuing this final version.

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What I found

Relevant law and Council policy

Housing Allocations

8. Every local housing authority must publish an allocations scheme that sets out its procedures for allocating housing and how it prioritises applications. (Housing Act 1996, section 166A(1) & (14))
9. Allocations schemes must give reasonable preference to applicants in the following categories:

• homeless people;
• people in insanitary, overcrowded or unsatisfactory housing;
• people who need to move on medical or welfare grounds;
• people who need to move to avoid hardship to themselves or others;
  (Housing Act 1996, section 166A(3))

10. Housing applicants can ask the council to review a wide range of decisions about their applications, including decisions about their housing priority.
11. I considered the following extracts of the Council’s housing allocation policy relevant to this complaint:

• Section 3.1 and Appendix 2 which explain how the Council prioritises applications by placing applicants in bands. The Council awards Band A to those with urgent housing needs including those with an urgent medical or welfare need to move.
• Section 3.2 which explains the length of time on the waiting list will determine priority for those households in the same priority band. The effective date the Council measures from, will be the initial date of application or the date the applicant “notified the local authority of a significant change in circumstances which improved their priority band”.
• Section 3.8 says that it will give priority for three bed houses with two living rooms to larger families (i.e., those it assesses as needing four bedrooms).
• Section 10.6 covers changes in circumstance affecting priority and says this can include “the health of any member [of the household] getting better or worse”.

12. The Council is a partner in a local choice-based lettings scheme which includes various social housing providers (Kent Homechoice). Applicants with housing priority can bid for available properties advertised via a website.

Homelessness

13. Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and the Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities set out councils’ powers and duties to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Someone is homeless if they have no accommodation or if they have accommodation, but it is not reasonable for them to continue to live there. (Housing Act 1996, Section 175)
14. If someone contacts a council seeking help to obtain accommodation and gives it ‘reason to believe’ they ‘may be’ homeless, the council has a duty to make inquiries into what, if any, duty it owes them. The threshold for triggering the duty to make inquiries is low. The person does not have to complete a specific form or approach a particular department of the council. (Housing Act 1996, section 184 and Homelessness Code of Guidance paragraphs 6.2 and 18.5)
15. On its website the Council explains the duties it has towards households threatened with, or who are, homeless. At the bottom of the webpage the Council gives advice that if someone still needs help with housing, they should register at the Kent Homechoice website.

Background to the complaint

16. Mrs C first complained to us at the end of 2023, that the Council had not given the correct priority to her housing application, under its housing allocation policy. Mrs C lives in a private rented house in the Council’s area and has done so for several years. Her household includes her husband and three children, one of whom is aged over 18. Her house has three floors, with its kitchen on the ground floor, its living room on the first floor and Mrs C’s bedroom (with en suite bathroom) on the second floor.
17. We noted Mrs C had a disability that meant she could climb stairs but only with difficulty and pain. And because of the layout of her house, she did not often go downstairs but stayed in her bedroom so she could access the en suite bathroom. Her husband left drinks and meals for her every day as he went to work. If Mrs C went to the kitchen, she could not carry items such as a drink, back up the stairs.
18. We found fault in three areas. First, the Council had not reviewed the priority of Mrs C’s housing application when she presented new evidence to it in December 2023. Her housing application had a Band C priority at the time. The new evidence was:

• a letter from a specialist mental health provider. This said Mrs C’s inability to move around her three storey home due to severe and chronic pain worsened her mental health;
• a housing needs assessment completed by an Occupational Therapist. This noted Mrs C’s living conditions and that her landlord would not agree to any home adaptations. It said Mrs C needed a property with one flight of stairs with stair rails. It said Mrs C needed the property to have a ground floor lounge, kitchen and toilet to promote her independence and improve her mental health.

19. Second, we found fault because the Council had not considered whether Mrs C might be homeless. It had not asked itself if it was reasonable for Mrs C to continue to occupy her home.
20. Third, we found fault in the Council’s decision making about what type of property Mrs C could bid for, under the housing allocation policy. The Council only allowed Mrs C to bid for a four-bed property which are scarce. But its housing allocation policy implied families of her size could also bid for three bed properties with two living rooms. We could not see why Mrs C could not bid for one of these latter properties if it also had a downstairs toilet.
21. We said these faults caused injustice to Mrs C in the form of distress. She did not know if the Council had banded her housing application correctly nor if she could be considered homeless and eligible for temporary accommodation. She also experienced distress in not being able to bid for larger three-bedroom homes.
22. The Council agreed that to remedy this injustice it would, within 20 working days:
1. provide a written apology to Mrs C;
2. make a symbolic payment of £500 in recognition of her distress;
3. lift the restriction on Mrs C bidding for three-bedroom properties. This was on the understanding Mrs C only intended bidding on properties that met the needs set out in her housing needs assessment, to the extent she could identify those properties;
4. review Mrs C’s housing priority and consider also whether she was homeless;
5. consider if it should backdate Mrs C’s housing priority, if it increased this to Band A;
6. if the circumstances in e) applied, consider also if any delay in changing priority had resulted in Mrs C having missed out on bidding for suitable properties as a result. In these circumstances we expected the Council to consider making a further symbolic payment to Mrs C in line with Part 8 of our published guidance on remedies.
23. In addition, the Council agreed to make some service improvements. These included a commitment to carry out a feasibility study to improve the information it publicised about properties available to let, to include information on the number of living rooms.

Key facts relevant to this investigation

24. The Council provided an apology to Mrs C around five weeks after we issued our decision. Its apology letter asked Mrs C to provide her bank details so it could also make the payment to her. The same letter also promised that it would lift the restriction on Mrs C bidding for three-bedroom properties.
25. The review completed around six weeks after we issued our decision. The Council decided that it should place Mrs C’s housing application in Band A. It backdated that award to December 2023. It also said the Council should take “a homeless application” from Mrs C “should [she] pursue this” via the Kent Homechoice website with its officer saying they believed her home unsuitable for her needs. It noted that Mrs C said she would consider any offer of temporary or emergency accommodation “as long as it improved” the family’s living circumstances. It said Mrs C had to consider the impact on her children if any such accommodation was outside the District.
26. Mrs C says that during the housing review, the Council’s officer advised her to change her status on the website used to bid for housing. Mrs C said she updated her status to “homeless” accordingly. She provided me a screen-print in which she answered the question: “which of these best describes your current living situation” with the reply “currently homeless”.
27. When the Council wrote to Mrs C, providing her a copy of the review, it said it had not found Mrs C missed out on suitable accommodation between December 2023 and August 2024, when she received Band A status. The Council also apologised for completing the review late.
28. Mrs C questioned this with us. She provided us with details of several properties available for rent since January 2024 where if she had Band A status, she thought she would have succeeded in bidding for. Mostly the properties went to applicants in Band B. In another case the property was under shortlisting.

Council response to our enquiries

29. In its reply to our enquiries the Council recognised it completed the actions agreed following our further investigation late. It said staff absence contributed to this.
30. It said that Mrs C had not completed a homeless application. It pointed out that if she did, and the Council offered temporary accommodation this would likely be outside of its area, given the shortage of suitable temporary accommodation. The Council said that its housing officer had not told Mrs C to update her status on Homechoice and nor could it see that she had done so.
31. It said that it considered only one of the properties identified by Mrs C which had become available since December 2023, suitable to meet her needs. That was the property under shortlisting at the time of the complaint. It had two reception rooms and a downstairs bathroom. It said in other cases it found the properties identified did not have suitable bathing facilities for Mrs C. It also pointed out that sometimes the registered housing provider was a Housing Association which undertook its own shortlisting.
32. For the property that was suitable for Mrs C, the Council advised it allocated this to another household with a Band A need. They had a higher priority because of a longer waiting date than Mrs C. There was some delay in completing the letting due to the Council ensuring the property met the needs of that household, which required it to arrange an additional inspection.

My findings

The complaint the Council was late in completing actions agreed

33. The Council was at fault for being late in delivering four of the actions agreed following our previous investigation. It should have provided its apology and payment to Mrs C, lifted her restriction on bidding for three-bed properties and completed its housing review within four weeks of our decision. But it took around six weeks to complete all these actions.
34. This caused some injustice to Mrs C as she experienced frustration in waiting for these outcomes. However, while I considered any delay regrettable, it was not extreme. The Council had also apologised for the delay in completing the housing review. So, I considered no further investigation justified into this part of the complaint.

The complaint about backdating Band A status

35. I did not find fault with the Council using the December 2023 date. It used this date as this is when it received the housing needs report and letter from the specialist mental health provider. Those documents did not describe new circumstances for Mrs C. Both the unsuitability of her housing, and its impact on her mental health, were factors present before December 2023. I also appreciate that our earlier investigation found Mrs C had made her own efforts to alert the Council to these matters.
36. But the Council could reasonably follow a policy of only applying changes of circumstances to housing applications, at the time it received notice of those changes. This could include when it received evidence from relevant professionals to support an applicant’s statement about their worsening health and / or the greater negative impact a property had on their health over time.

The complaint Mrs C missed out on potentially suitable properties

37. I considered if the Council had given Mrs C’s application Band A priority in December 2023, would she have been able to bid successfully on a suitable property before August 2024. On balance, I did not find that was so.
38. I did not have full information on all properties identified by Mrs C. But I had insufficient evidence to contradict the view of the Council that she identified only one property suitable to meet her needs. While at the time she bid for that, Mrs C was in the highest priority band, so was the successful household. That household had an earlier priority date. Consequently, the Council could not allocate that property to Mrs C.
39. More generally, this part of the complaint raised an issue identified in the previous investigation, about the detail available to those on the Council's housing register when at properties. Mrs C was in the unfortunate position of knowing only a particular type property would meet her needs. But the property searches via the Kent Homechoice website did not make clear if an individual property would meet that need.
40. However, I decided against making any further finding or recommendation. This was because of the earlier commitment given by the Council to conduct a feasibility study to see if it could improve the information given to applicants through the Kent Homechoice website.

The complaint about response to homelessness

41. I found some fault in how the Council followed up its review of Mrs C’s housing needs. This said her home was not suitable to meet her needs. This implied the Council considered her homeless, although it had not made a formal decision under the Housing Act 1996. This in turn was because it had not received a ‘homeless application’ from Mrs C. But it had not provided evidence to show it had explained to Mrs C the need for her to do so. Not had it provided her with such a form at, or following, the review.
42. Mrs C’s said the Council told her to update her information on her Kent Homechoice website and provided me evidence she had done this. This appeared consistent with what the Council published on its website. However, I noted the Council denied giving this advice and said her status remained unchanged.
43. I could not resolve these differences in evidence and did not consider I needed to do so. Because it was clear Mrs C remained uncertain about the Council’s position on her potential homelessness. Mrs C would remain uncertain until the Council clarified how she could pursue this as well as the potential implications if she did so. This was her injustice.
44. In response to my draft decision the Council said it would meet again with Mrs C. It would explain more about its thinking on homelessness. It would also discuss with her the likely availability of any interim or temporary accommodation and the potential impact this would have on the family. It pointed out that if it made a formal decision on homelessness, this would carry with it a right of review for Mrs C. It also agreed to provide Mrs C with an apology.

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Agreed action

45. To remedy Mrs C’s distress, the Council will therefore provide a further apology to her within 20 working days of this decision. It will also write to her following its meeting to consider her potential homelessness in more detail, so both parties are clear how matters will proceed.
46. The Council will provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

47. For reasons set out above I upheld this complaint finding fault by the Council caused injustice to Mrs C. The Council agreed to take action that I considered would remedy that injustice. Consequently, I completed my investigation satisfied with its response.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman