Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about a housing application. Part of the complaint is late without good enough reason to investigate now. On more recent events, there is not enough evidence of fault. The Information Commissioner is better placed than us to decide if the Council has wrongly withheld information.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the Council’s handling of his housing application. He says this has affected him practically, emotionally and financially.

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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. 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)
3. 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 further investigation would not lead to a different outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
4. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. However, we may decide to investigate if we think there are good reasons. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council’s housing allocations policy.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. Mr X says the Council has delayed unreasonably giving him social housing. He has been on the housing register due to homelessness since 2018.
8. The restriction in paragraph 2 applies to events before September 2023, which was 12 months before Mr X’s complaint to us. Mr X knew what his circumstances were, could reasonably have known of his dissatisfaction at not receiving social housing yet and could reasonably have pursued the matter including coming to us much sooner. It would be disproportionate for us to try to look at so many years’ events and we would be unlikely to reach a clear enough view about events dating back many years. So I have not considered the older events.
9. Mr X’s housing application is in Band B and his family is entitled to a two-bedroom property. Mr X suggests the Council is at fault because he has not got social housing yet. However, the Council has no duty actually to give social housing in any particular timescale to Mr X or anyone else. Its duty here is just to let Mr X bid with appropriate priority for vacant social housing in line with the Council’s allocations scheme. It is not unusual, especially in London, for it to take many years to receive on offer and many applicants may never receive an offer. The Council estimates it normally takes 12 years for a Band B applicant (including homeless applicants) needing a two-bedroom property to receive an offer. I understand Mr X’s dissatisfaction at having waited six years so far. However, the evidence suggests that is due to the shortage of social housing compared with demand, not to fault by the Council.
10. Mr X says the Council failed to give his application “reasonable preference within the meaning of the relevant laws and regulations.” The law requires councils to give “reasonable preference” on the housing register to applicants in certain circumstances, one of which is homelessness. This simply means those applicants should have reasonable preference compared with applicants who are not in those circumstances. It does not mean having absolute priority or getting social housing in any particular timescale. Nor does it mean councils must offer homelessness applicants social housing at all or in preference to all other applicants.
11. The evidence suggests the Council has met the “reasonable preference” duty by giving applicants including Mr X a higher band on the housing register than it gives many applicants without that preference. Mr X considers that inadequate, but that stems from his view of what form “reasonable preference” should take and how quickly such preference should resolve his homelessness. The Council is entitled to take the approach it has with Mr X’s application. Investigation is unlikely to find any fault by the Council on this point.
12. Mr X suggests other applicants with similar housing need to him, but less waiting time, have got social housing. This seems speculative as he has not put forward any evidence for such a claim. It is not the Ombudsman’s role to go on a ‘fishing expedition’ looking at the Council’s allocations of social housing in the absence of clear grounds to believe there was fault that directly caused Mr X a significant injustice.
13. Mr X says the Council told him in August 2024 that, of his last ten bids for housing, the one that had received highest placing was on 21 January 2024. Mr X says this suggests he had only bid ten times between January and August 2024, which he says is not correct because he normally bids for one property each week.
14. Mr X appears to have misunderstood. The Council wrote to him on 27 March 2024 saying “…of your last 10 bids your highest placed position was 9, submitted on 21 January 2024…” The Council’s later letter in August 2024 referred back to the letter of 27 March, and repeated that letter’s main points, including that the earlier letter had referred to ten bids since January. So the Council never implied Mr X had only bid for ten properties from January to August; nor did it say anything about any bids after March. There were nearly ten weeks between 21 January and 27 March. So what the Council said in March was consistent with Mr X’s statement about normally bidding for one property each week. I see no fault here.
15. Mr X says the Council has not given him all the information he says he needs to “scrutinise more closely” the Council’s actions. He wants information about housing allocations the Council has made, he says so he can check whether the Council allocated properties to applicants according to how long they had been in the relevant band. It is not our role to obtain information on Mr X’s behalf. Nor is there good reason for us to seek more information on our own account, because, as I have explained above, there is not enough evidence of fault likely to have deprived Mr X of an offer of housing to warrant us investigating. If Mr X believes the Council has failed to supply information he is entitled to, that is more appropriately for the Information Commissioner to decide.

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Final decision

16. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. Part of the complaint is late without good enough reason to investigate now. On more recent events, there is not enough evidence of fault. The Information Commissioner is better placed than us to decide if the Council has wrongly withheld information.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman