Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s handling of a “right to buy” application. It is reasonable to expect the complainants to take court action.

The complaint

1. Miss X and her mother Miss Y complain that, when they applied to buy their Council home, the Council:
1. did not give them another opportunity to provide Miss Y’s bank statements before cancelling the application (Miss X had mistakenly only provided her own bank statements during the timescale to give information); and
2. did not reopen the application when Miss X provided the missing information.

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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. 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

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

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My assessment

5. The law allows the county court to decide any dispute about the 'right to buy' except for disputes about the valuation of property; valuation is not relevant to this complaint. (Housing Act 1985, section 181) So the restriction in paragraph 2 applies.
6. The court could decide whether the Council should have chased the missing information and/or extended the timescale when it received incomplete documents. The court could also decide whether the Council should have reopened the previous application when Miss X and Miss Y provided the missing documents three days after the Council had cancelled the application. As the law sets out the steps each side should take at each stage of the “right to buy” process, those points seem more properly for the courts than the Ombudsman to decide.
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, particularly in the context of a transaction for a valuable asset such as a house. The court could also make a binding order if it saw fit, which the Ombudsman could not. For these reasons, it is reasonable to expect Miss X and Miss Y to use their right to go to court if they want a decision on those points.
8. It has also been open to Miss X and Miss Y to make another application to buy their home since the Council cancelled the first application.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate this complaint because it is reasonable to expect Miss X and Miss Y to use the right to take court action.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman