Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s rejection of Ms X’s application to the housing register. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Ms X complained about the Council’s decision to reject her housing application because it says she does not meet the residency criteria and she is not overcrowded to meet the qualifying threshold. She says she left the area for personal safety reasons in past years and that the Council delayed processing her application.

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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.

(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 response. 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. Ms X says she applied to the Council housing register in June 2024. The Council did not respond to her until September when it asked her to provide further documentation. She sent the documents and the Council told her within 20 days that she did not qualify for the register under its allocations policy as she did not meet the residency requirements or overcrowding threshold.
6. Ms X asked the Council to review its decision and it did this but the outcome was unchanged. She also complained about the delay of over 8 weeks which the Council took to process her application before it asked her for further documents.
7. The Council apologised for the delay but told her that it did not consider that this had caused her any significant injustice because the decision and the review were negative in any case.
8. 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.
9. We may not find fault with a council’s assessment of a housing application if it has carried this out in line with its published allocations scheme. We recognise that the demand for social housing far outstrips the supply of properties in many areas.
10. I have seen no evidence of fault which would suggest that Ms X should be accepted onto the housing register.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s rejection of Ms X’s application to the housing register. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman