Summary: We will not exercise discretion to investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to allocate permanent housing to Miss X since 2007. This complaint was received outside the normal 12-month period for investigating complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr X could not have complained to us sooner. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s current assessment of Miss X’s housing application which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained about the Council’s failure to find her suitable permanent accommodation since it accepted her under the main housing duty in 2007 as a homeless applicant. She says she has been in temporary accommodation for 17 years and the Council has not told her when she will be rehoused.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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 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)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council’s response.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Miss X says she has been in temporary accommodation since 2007 and the Council has failed to offer her suitable permanent accommodation. The Council says that she has been made 6 offers of accommodation in the period up to 2022 and that either she has rejected the offers or the Council has withdrawn them due to suitability challenges.
7. Miss X is currently on the housing register in Band 2 and has made some unsuccessful bids since that date.
8. We will not investigate the matters prior to her complaint about her current application within the past 12 months. This is because the complaint about earlier matters is outside the normal 12-month period for receiving complaints. It was reasonable for Miss X to complain to us at any time since 2007 or to use the review/appeal procedure under the Housing Act 1996 part 7 if she wished to challenge the suitability of the offers made. There is no evidence to suggest that Miss X could not have complained to us sooner.
9. The Council has a duty to provide temporary accommodation under the main housing duty but there is no timescale for when it might offer permanent accommodation. The onus is on the applicant to bid successfully under the Council’s choice-based lettings system and this is subject to suitable vacancies occurring. The Council has told Miss X that it cannot predict when she may be rehoused. Many councils have waiting times of years or even decades due to the shortage of vacancies and number so applicants.
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.
11. We may not find fault with a council’s assessment of a housing application/ a housing applicant’s priority 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

12. We will not exercise discretion to investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to allocate permanent housing to Miss X since 2007. This complaint was received outside the normal 12-month period for investigating complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr X could not have complained to us sooner. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s current assessment of Miss X’s housing application which would warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman