Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment and review 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. He says the original priority banding was band 3 and this was only overturned on review but he believes the procedure was inconsistent and unclear.

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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. Mr X applied to the Council’s housing register and was awarded Band 3 priority following a medical assessment from the Council’s independent medical advisor. He says has medical needs which were not properly considered and asked for the application to be reviewed. He submitted a formal compalint about his banding to the Council.
6. The Council should have treated the complaint as a review request of his housing priority which is under s.166A of the Housing act 1996. Instead, a stage 1 complaint was carried out and the reviewer decided to change the banding to Band 2. Mr X remained concerned about the Council’s procedures and escalated his compalint to stage 2 of the complaints procedure. The Council acknowledged that the wording used in the original assessment of his medical needs was different to that in its allocations policy but that it carried the same meaning.
7. I have considered the correspondence related to the decision on this application and there is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s actions. The original assessment took into account the medical review by the Council’s advisors and the officer decided that it did not warrant higher banding than Band 3. We expect assessors to consider all the information and then make their own decision which is always merits -based.
8. Mr X felt there was insufficient evidence of how the decision was made but this is not the case. The officer had all the relevant information available and had to decide the banding. The Stage 1 reviewer was a senior officer and he changed the banding but there was no more explanation as to why his view was better informed than the previous officer’s.
9. Although there is an allocations policy the final priority decision is generally based on the view of the assessor of how it matches the criteria and this is always subjective. In this case the original decision was reviewed and the reviewer decided to award a higher banding. This is how the procedure should operate and Mr X could have received the same banding on review or a lower one, it was at the discretion of the reviewer to decide based on the evidence.
10. The only fault in this case is that the Council failed to treat Mr X’s complaint as a s.166A review request. As these reviews are non-statutory and do not carry appeal rights the complaint outcome was no different to a review decision.
11. 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

12. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment and review 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