Summary: We have upheld this complaint about the Council’s delay considering Ms X’s housing application. The Council has already apologised and offered a financial remedy and has agreed to resolve this complaint early by taking action to improve its services.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council significantly delayed assessing her medical priority and considering her application for a housing transfer.
2. As a result Ms X said she and her children spent more than a year living in a property without a functioning lift, which left them trapped at times on the floor of their building due to their medical needs.

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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 provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)
4. We cannot investigate complaints about the provision or management of social housing by a council acting as a registered social housing provider. (Local Government Act 1974, paragraph 5A schedule 5, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

7. When the lift in Ms X’s building broke down for several months, Ms X said due to the family’s medical conditions, they were often restricted to their floor of the building.
8. Ms X asked the Council to review her household’s medical priority on the housing register. She said they had an urgent medical need to move because of the poorly functioning lift, alongside other issues. The Council took seventeen months to carry out its review. When it did, it agreed to award Ms X additional priority on health grounds.
9. The Council apologised for its delay and said this was due to a backlog of similar applications. It also accepted it failed to provide her with regular updates while she was waiting. The Council offered to pay Ms X £200 to reflect the frustration she had been caused and noted in its final complaint response that the lift issues had now improved.
10. Ms X complained to the Ombudsman. She said the Council’s financial remedy was not sufficient to remedy the period they had spent so restricted in their building. Ms X also said she should be in a higher band due to the severity of the issues at her property.
11. The most significant injustice caused to Ms X has been her family’s restriction due to the poorly functioning lift. However this arose due to disrepair in her building, which is the responsibility of the social housing landlord to address. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman cannot investigate the actions of social housing landlords (including when they are the Council itself). These types of complaints are for the Housing Ombudsman.
12. I have instead considered the Council’s administrative functions as part of this complaint which includes its significant delay reviewing Ms X’s banding. The review decision itself was explained clearly and in line with the Council’s allocations policy so I cannot criticise it, aside from its delay.
13. Regarding the frustration caused by the delay and poor communications, I am satisfied that the Council’s apology and financial remedy of £200 was appropriate action. However the Council said it had a large backlog of these types of review requests. If we investigated, it is likely we would find fault causing injustice to others, so we asked the Council to consider remedying this injustice by making improvements to its service and reporting back to us on its progress. The Council has agreed to do this and so we will not investigate this complaint further.

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Agreed action

14. Within one month of the date of the final decision, the Council has agreed to:
1. provide the Ombudsman with an update on the scale of its backlog of allocations decisions;
2. provide an action plan outlining how it will tackle the backlog of allocations decisions; and
3. ensure delayed applicants receive regular updates while it works through these cases.

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Final decision

15. We have upheld the complaint about the Council’s delays in making allocations decisions because the Council has agreed to resolve the complaint early by making service improvements.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman