Summary: The Council was at fault for delays carrying out a review into Ms X’s housing allocations decision. The Council was also at fault for its complaint handling. This caused Ms X frustration and uncertainty. The Council agreed to apologise to Ms X and make a payment for the time and trouble bringing her complaint.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council did not properly assess her medical priority on its housing register.
2. Ms X said this meant she was in a lower priority than she should have been and was living in unsuitable accommodation.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may recommend a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. 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)
5. 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)
6. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(1), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered evidence provided by Ms X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
8. Ms X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

Law and guidance

9. Every local housing authority must publish an allocations scheme that sets out how it prioritises applicants, and its procedures for allocating housing. All allocations must be made in strict accordance with the published scheme. (Housing Act 1996, section 166A(1) & (14))
10. An allocations scheme must give reasonable preference to applicants in the following categories:

• homeless people;
• people in insanitary, overcrowded or unsatisfactory housing;
• people who need to move on medical or welfare grounds;
• people who need to move to avoid hardship to themselves or others;
  (Housing Act 1996, section 166A(3))

11. Councils must notify applicants in writing of the following decisions and give reasons:

• that the applicant is not eligible for an allocation;
• that the applicant is not a qualifying person;
• a decision not to award the applicant reasonable preference because of their unacceptable behaviour.

12. The Council must also notify the applicant of the right to request a review of these decisions. (Housing Act 1996, section 166A(9))
13. Housing applicants can ask the council to review a wide range of decisions about their applications, including decisions about their housing priority.
14. Statutory guidance on the allocation of accommodation says:

• review procedures should be clear and fair with timescales for each stage of the process
• there should be a timescale for requesting a review - 21 days is suggested as reasonable;
• the review should be carried out by an officer senior to the original decision maker, or by a panel not including the original decision maker;
• reviews should normally be completed within a set deadline - 8 weeks is suggested as reasonable.

15. The Council’s allocations policy places applicants into Bands. Band A is the highest Band. Applicants can receive medical priority and be placed into Band A, B, or C depending on how serious medical need is.

What happened

16. In June 2023, Ms X approached the Council for housing assistance. At the time she was living in a one bedroom property with her daughter and son who were 15 and 5 years old. Ms X’s landlord was a housing association.
17. In early 2024, Ms X obtained a property through the Council’s housing register. This was a two bedroom property. Since moving into this property Ms X has had another child.
18. In June 2025, Ms X approached the Council and asked it to complete a medical assessment. Ms X was on the Council housing register and in Band C for being overcrowded. Ms X explained her 17 year old child had ADHD and sleep problems and the property was on the fourth floor and overcrowded. Ms X also said her son was on the waiting list for an ADHD assessment.
19. In early July 2025, the Council issued Ms X with a decision saying she did not have medical priority. The decision listed the criteria Ms X needed to satisfy to have medical priority and the Council said it did not consider her housing situation qualified her for this.
20. In late July 2025, Ms X asked the Council to review this decision. Ms X said she had ADHD and was getting counselling, her son had allergies and asthma and the property was making this worse as they were overcrowded and near a building site so there was lots of dust. Ms X also said there was poor ventilation in the property and other residents in the building smoked on their balconies. Ms X said her son was at risk of climbing over the balcony and her daughter was finding it difficult in their current living environment.
21. In September 2025, Ms X asked the Council for an update.
22. In December 2025, Ms X moved to another property by mutual exchange.

Ms X’s complaint

23. Ms X complained to the Council on 28 May 2025. Ms X said her property was overcrowded and unsuitable for her family and asked the Council to move her.
24. The Council provided its stage one response to Ms X on 4 July 2025. The Council told Ms X it had looked at her housing register application and decided she had no medical property.
25. Ms X asked the Council to consider her complaint at stage two of its complaints process on 26 July 2025.
26. The Council provided its final response to Ms X’s complaint on 3 December 2025. The Council acknowledged it delayed responding to Ms X’s complaint at stage one and two. The Council said it sent Ms X no updates about the delay for stage one and for stage two it only got in touch with her to update her after she chased the Council for a response. The Council said the delays were caused by staff leave and it was currently recruiting more staff to deal with its caseload.
27. The Council also said it did not handle Ms X’s request for a review of her medical priority properly. The Council said her request was only passed to the reviews team after she sent in her stage two complaint.

Findings – delays carrying out the review

28. After the Council issued Ms X with a decision saying it did not consider her to have medical priority, she asked for a review of this. I consider the Council was at fault for the way it handled Ms X’s review. The review should have been completed around the middle of September 2025 as this would have been 8 weeks after Ms X asked for it.
29. Ms X ended up moving to an alternative property via mutual exchange before the Council could complete the review. This was in early December 2025. At this time Ms X had an outstanding review which was ongoing for over four months.
30. The delays carrying out the review would have caused Ms X some frustration and uncertainty, however she has now moved to a different property via mutual exchange, so the outcome of the review is no longer relevant. However there could be other applicants who are waiting a significant time for the Council to complete a review into their housing register decision.
31. In a previous case we investigated in June 2025 we asked the Council to provide evidence it had reduced its backlog of reviews. The Council told us it had halved its backlog in August 2025. While this is positive, the events of this complaint have mainly happened since this time as Ms X asked for her review at the end of July 2025.

Findings – complaint handling

32. The Council was at fault for how it handled Ms X’s complaint. The Council recognised this in its responses to her. The Council should have responded at Stage one within 10 working days and at Stage two within 20 working days. It missed both of these deadlines.
33. The delays at Stage two were particularly long as it took from late July 2025 to early December 2025 to provide Ms X with a Stage two response. This caused Ms X frustration and distress given the time she spent pursuing the complaint.
34. We have found the Council at fault for complaint handling on another case and in response to this the Council confirmed it had recruited some new staff to carry out Stage two investigations at the end of 2025. In light of this there is no need for us to make a further service improvement for complaint handling at this time.

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Agreed Action

35. Within one month of my final decision the Council should carry out the following:
• Apologise to Ms X for the injustice caused by the above faults. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The organisation should consider this guidance in making the apology I have recommended in my findings.
• Pay Ms X £200 to recognise the time and trouble she experienced in bringing her complaint due to the delays at Stage one and two of the Council’s complaints process.
• Provide the Ombudsman with a further update showing how it has managed to reduce the number of cases where people are waiting for longer than 8 weeks for the outcome of their review into their housing allocation decision.
36. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

I find fault causing injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman