Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of Mrs X’s rehousing application. This is because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council sufficient to warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about the Council’s handling of her rehousing application. She says it was at fault in its requests for supporting information and that it failed to tell her about her right to take her complaint to Stage 2 of the Council’s complaints procedure.

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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
• any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, 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 the complainant’s representative and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Mrs X complained to the Council about its handling of her rehousing application. The Council did not uphold her complaint about its request for supporting information but did apologise because in error it had not told her about her right to take her complaint to Stage 2 of its complaints procedure.
6. It confirmed her request for a review on its decision on her rehousing application would be carried out under a separate procedure. Following the review, the Council awarded Mrs X a Band C priority based on the supporting medical evidence she had provided and she has since been successful in her bid for a new property and started a new tenancy in February 2025.
7. We do not investigate every complaint we receive and in this case there are insufficient grounds to warrant an investigation. The Council explained officers request the required documentation again following a review of the initial documents where applicants have not supplied the necessary information and noted that Mrs X had been able to provide all that was required. The Council acknowledged that information about complaining at Stage 2 of its complaints procedure had been omitted from its Stage 1 response and it apologised for this.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because we are unlikely to find evidence of fault by the Council sufficient to warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman