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. Mr X complained about the Council’s assessment of his housing application which it rejected for the housing register in 2022. He asked for a review of the decision and in June 2025 the Council again rejected his application because it says he does not meet the threshold for medical or housing needs.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

6. Mr X applied to the Council’s housing register in 2021. The Council rejected his application in 2022 and since then he has provided further medical information about his housing situation. We cannot consider this earlier application because it concerns matters outside the normal 12-month period for receiving complaints.
7. The time for receiving complaints is from when someone became aware of the matter they wished to complain about, not when they complained to the Council or it issued its final response. We would expect someone to complain to us within a year, even if they were dissatisfied with the time the complaints procedure was taking.
8. In 2024 Mr X asked the Council for a review of his housing application circumstances. The Council did not complete the review under s.166A of the Housing Act 1996 until June 2025. The Council accepted that there was delay in conducting the review but the outcome was that it supported the original decision that his application did not qualify under the housing allocations policy.
9. 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.
10. In this case the Council considered all the evidence which Mr X provided with his application but it did not consider that he met the threshold for inclusion on the housing register. We cannot usually overturn a council’s decision that an application does not qualify 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

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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