Summary: We shall not investigate this complaint about how the Council handled Mrs X’s claim to buy her home. This is because Mrs X has the right to go to court.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains about the Council’s handling of her claim to buy her home. She states this has caused her financial loss and stress.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
3. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
4. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue.

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mrs X provided and discussed the complaint with her. I also considered copy correspondence the Council supplied. I took account of the relevant law. I gave Mrs X the opportunity to comment on my draft decision.

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What I found

6. Mrs X applied to buy her Council home. The Council gave her a purchase price. Mrs X queried the price because she understood some of her neighbours had recently received larger discounts than the Council was offering her. The Council explained it had given those discounts in error.
7. The District Valuer can consider disputes about the valuation of a property where someone is exercising the right to buy. Mrs X told me she accepts the explanation the Council eventually gave her, so she does not dispute the valuation and discount it offered her. However, she is dissatisfied with the Council’s handling of the matter.
8. It is not the Ombudsman’s role to police or oversee councils’ activities generally. Our role is to consider individual complaints, deciding in each case if the law gives the Ombudsman the power to consider the complaint and, if so, whether we should investigate the complaint.
9. When Mrs X first complained to us in July 2020, she said she wanted the Council to give her the same discount as it gave the other tenants. When I spoke to Mrs X more recently, she advised she was not now seeking this, but she was unhappy with how long the Council took to deal with her concerns. She stated if the Council had resolved matters sooner. So Mrs X stated she wants the Council to deduct from her purchase price the rent she paid while waiting for the Council to resolve matters.
10. The law entitles a tenant to serve a delay notice on the Council in various circumstances, including ‘…where the tenant considers that delays on the part of the landlord are preventing him from exercising expeditiously his right to buy…’ (Housing Act 1985, section 153A) I understand Mrs X did not serve a delay notice when she was in contact with the Council after getting the purchase price, although she had served a delay notice about a separate matter earlier in the process.
11. The law gives the county court the right to decide any dispute about the right to buy. (Housing Act 1985, section 181) So the restriction in paragraph 3 applies here. I consider it would be reasonable to expect Mrs X to go to court for a decision about whether any of the rent she paid while trying to resolve matters should be offset against the purchase price. The court has the expertise to consider the matter, including considering the relevance of Mrs X serving any delay notices or not. The court has the power to make a binding order on the Council if it sees fit. There might be some cost to court action but there is also the significant benefit Mrs X is seeking to derive from the offsetting of rent against the purchase price. Therefore I shall not investigate this complaint.
12. The Council accepted it delayed from August to October 2020 taking Mrs X’s complaint to the second stage of its complaints procedure. The Council apologised and offered Mrs X £100. Mrs X considers that inadequate. This point relates to the Council’s handling of Mrs X’s complaint. For the reasons given in paragraph 4, I consider it would be disproportionate to investigate the Council’s complaint-handling when we are not proposing to investigate the substantive issue, namely the handling of the right to buy matter.

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Final decision

13. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because it would be reasonable to expect Mrs X to use her right to go to court.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman