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 assessment of her housing application priority. She says that she should have been given higher medical priority sooner and that the Council’s policy does not fairly prioritise different priority groups.

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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 information provided by the complainant and the Council. 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 did not give sufficient priority to her housing application. she says that she had to provide additional medical evidence and when her banding was being reviewed and finally increased to Band 4 she believes she may have missed a vacancy to bid on while the review was taking place.
6. The guidance on housing application reviews has no statutory timescale for decisions because they are non-statutory reviews. It suggests that 8 weeks is a reasonable timescale in keeping with statutory review timescale but councils should retain discretion to take longer if necessary.
7. The Council determined Miss X’s review within 8 weeks and any vacancies which she could bid on during this time could only be related to her previous priority banding. This is because there is no guarantee of the outcome of a review and the result may be that the banding is not changed or it is reduced in priority. There is no fault in the Council’s review of her application.
8. Miss X also believes that the Council’s allocations scheme is unfairly biased towards existing tenants who are asking to downsize their tenancy who get the highest priority over applicants such as herself with medical needs. The Localism Act 2011 gave councils freedom to devise their own allocation schemes and to decide what priority should be given within reasonable preference groups. Most councils’ policies prioritise underoccupation by existing tenants because this releases vacancies for high priority applicants who may be in temporary accommodation.
9. If Miss X believes the allocations policy is unlawful she could only seek a remedy by asking for a determination in the High Court by way of a judicial review. There is no evidence to suggest that her application was incorrectly assessed and given the appropriate banding within the scheme.
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.

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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