Summary: Mr X complains about the Council’s handling of his Right to Buy application. We will not investigate the complaint because Mr X had an alternative remedy against the Council through the courts which we would reasonably have expected him to have used.

The complaint

1. The complainant, who I refer to as Mr X, says the Council’s delay in dealing with his Right to Buy application led to its expiry before the sale completed. He says as a result he has been caused distress and financial loss and to proceed he will have to start the process afresh.

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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)

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How I considered this complaint

4. In considering the complaint I reviewed the information provided by Mr X and the Council. I gave Mr X the opportunity to comment on my draft decision and considered what he said.

What I found

5. In October 2019 the Council sent Mr X’s solicitors the sales pack which set out the financial forms and information it required to enable Mr X’s Right to Buy to be completed.
6. Having heard nothing from the solicitors by February 2020, the Council sent them a prior notice to complete. This provided details of all the financial information required by the Council so it could complete its due diligence checks, necessary to allow the sale to go ahead. It made clear this information was required at least 4 weeks before the proposed completion.
7. The solicitors sent information in by post but due to the pandemic lockdown this information could not be retrieved from the Council’s offices and instead the Council asked the solicitors for a scanned copy of the documents.
8. At the beginning of April the solicitors scanned documents for the Council but provided only 3 months instead of the required 12 months bank statements for Mr X. The Council advised the solicitors of this on 15 April and it served its final notice to complete on 20 April. This notice set the date of 22 June 2020 as the final expiry date for completion. The Council repeated its advice that all the information had to be provided within at least four weeks of the proposed completion.
9. The solicitors did not provide all the required information until 12 June which was outside the 4 weeks deadline for due diligence checks. As a result, the final notice to complete expired and the Council treated the application as withdrawn.
10. The Council addressed Mr X’s complaint about this matter at the two stages of its complaints procedure. It explained it had not, as Mr X claimed, lost the documents sent in by post in March but rather that it had not been able to access them due to the pandemic. It said the scanned documents it then received from his solicitors covered only 3 and not 12 months of bank statements and that by the time the solicitors sent in all the required information on 12 June, it was too late for the due diligence checks to be completed and the sale could not proceed. The Council told Mr X that the process for Right to Buy is set out by law and that had his solicitors believed it was delaying the process they could have served a formal notice of delay before the final notice to complete expired but they did not do so.
11. Dissatisfied with the Council’s response, Mr X complained to us.

Assessment

12. The restriction highlighted at paragraph 3 applies to Mr X’s complaint because had he thought the Council was acting with delay in processing his Right to Buy he, or his solicitors on his behalf, could have taken court action. As he had this alternative remedy available to him, the complaint falls outside our jurisdiction and will not be investigated.
13. I reviewed the information Mr X provided in response to my draft decision but none of it was evidence his solicitors had sent in to the Council 12 months of bank statements before June 2020.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate this complaint. This is because Mr X had an alternative remedy against the Council through the courts which we would reasonably have expected him to have used.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman