Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council cancelling Ms X’s application to buy her home. It is reasonable to expect Ms X to take court action.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council wrongly closed her application to buy her home under the ‘right to buy.’ She says the Council wrongly stated she had not provided all the necessary documents, failed properly to upload to its system everything she had supplied, and broke its commitment to tell her if any documents were missing.
2. Ms X applied shortly before the ‘right to buy’ discounts changed. At that time, she was entitled to a discount of up to £136,400. However, that application was closed, so if Ms X wants to buy her home, she must make a new application and will only receive the new discount of up to £16,000.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

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

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My assessment

6. The law allows the county court to decide any dispute about the 'right to buy' except for disputes about the valuation of property (the latter point is not relevant to this complaint). (Housing Act 1985, section 181) So the restriction in paragraph 3 applies to this complaint.
7. As the law expressly provides this route for resolving such disputes, we normally expect applicants to use it, with legal advice if necessary. There might be some cost to court action, but that alone does not automatically make taking court action unreasonable. This is particularly the case in the context of a transaction for a valuable asset such as Ms X's home and where the potential difference in discount is so significant. The court could also make a binding order if it saw fit, which the Ombudsman could not. The court could take evidence on oath about which documents Ms X supplied, what happened to those documents and what the Council said about letting Ms X know if anything was missing. The court could then decide whether the Council was wrong and, if so, could order the Council how to put that right, including whether to reinstate Ms X’s previous application or otherwise let Ms X buy her home at the equivalent of the previous discount. For these reasons, it is reasonable to expect Ms X to use the right to go to court.

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Final decision

8. We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because it is reasonable to expect her to take court action.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman