Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained about the Council’s failure to properly assess her housing application. She says it has refused to validate her application and applied irrelevant restrictions to her eligibility.

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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
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
  (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered the information provided by the complainant and the Council’s responses. I have also considered the Council’s housing allocations policy.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. Miss X says the Council has failed to properly assess and validate her housing application since she submitted it in early 2025. She says the Council has referred to irrelevant reasons why she may not be added to the housing register. It said there were inconsistencies in her reporting of previous addresses, admissions of previous housing fraud and questions over her existing tenancy in Suffolk.
6. The Council carried out a review of her case when she complained that the application was still not active for her to bid on the system. The review was not successful because the Council says there was outstanding information required from Miss X. In particular she had not provided information from a medical professional about her child’s need for a separate bedroom and was still a tenant of a different authority at the time.
7. The Council said that Miss X had claimed she was living in its area, but she retained a social housing tenancy in a different part of the country. Miss X says she had given notice on her home because of neighbour harassment but the Council’s checks with her social landlord confirmed to the Council that it has no records of this.
8. The Council advised Miss X to retain her existing tenancy and seek a mutual exchange with a tenant in her area. If she failed to do this her priority banding for her application will be the lowest because its allocations policy places applicants who have deliberately worsened their circumstances in order to obtain housing in Bronze banding.
9. Miss X complained that the Council had used her admissions of housing fraud to suspend her application even though this was not part of its allocations policy. The Council says it used the other disparities in her application to delay validation and that housing fraud is not currently in its policy, but is due to be adopted in future. If this happens Miss X would be ineligible to remain on the register once her application is live.
10. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.

We may not find fault with a council’s assessment of a housing application or a housing applicant’s priority if it has carried this out in line with its published allocations scheme. Miss X has exhausted the review procedure for housing allocations and there was no fault at the time of her complaint to us.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman