Summary: Miss X complained about the way the Council managed her Home Choice application for social housing. We found no evidence of fault.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained that the Council did not inform her when it started to auto-bid for properties on its Homechoice scheme and reduced her priority for houses when her youngest child reached the age of 16. She also complained that the Council did not respond to her complaint about the unsuitability of the accommodation she occupied between May 2018 and November 2020.
2. Miss X accepted the offer of a Council tenancy in November 2020. But she considers she spent too long in overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation while she waited for social housing.

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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 must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I spoke to Miss X and considered:
• the information she provided;
• the Council’s response to my enquiries;
• the Council’s housing allocations scheme;
• records of the bids Miss X and Council officers made on Homechoice and the outcomes.
6. Miss X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

The background to this complaint

7. This section gives a brief summary of the background to Miss X’s complaint. Our investigation is about what happened between February 2019 and November 2020.
8. Miss X and her two children were threatened with eviction from private rented accommodation in early 2018. The Council assisted Miss X under its general powers to prevent homelessness. It had not taken a homelessness application or accepted one of the accommodation duties owed to homeless applicants. The Council assisted Miss X before the statutory homelessness prevention duty in the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 came into force on 3 April 2018.
9. The Council nominated Miss X to a Housing Trust who offered her a two bedroom self-contained flat for a fixed term. Miss X and her family moved to this property in May 2018. Miss X says an officer told her at the time she would be offered social housing within four months.
10. Miss X was in priority band B on the Housing Register as someone who was threatened with homelessness. She retained this priority when she moved to the Housing Trust property. Her priority date was 19 January 2017. She could bid for three bedroom properties advertised on the Council’s Home Choice scheme.

What happened

The relevant law

11. Every local housing authority must publish an allocations scheme that sets out how it prioritises applicants, and its procedures for allocating housing.  All allocations must be made in strict accordance with the published scheme.  (Housing Act 1996, section 166A(1) & (14))
12. Councils must inform applicants that they have the right to the following general information:
• information to enable them to assess how their application is likely to be treated under its housing allocations scheme, and, in particular, whether they are likely to fall within the reasonable preference categories, and
• information about whether accommodation appropriate to their needs is likely to be made available to them and, if so, how long it is likely to be before accommodation becomes available.

The Council’s housing allocations scheme

13. The Council has a choice-based lettings scheme called Tandridge Home Choice. Applicants on the Housing Register can express interest in vacant properties which are advertised weekly by placing a bid. Applicants may bid for up to three properties each week. However the Council may also make bids for households with restricted choice, where it considers it appropriate to do so. This is known as “auto-bidding”.
14. The allocations scheme says the Council wants to give homeless applicants as much choice as possible about where they live. However, if applicants remain in temporary accommodation until their ideal property becomes available, this will limit the availability of accommodation for other homeless people. So households in these circumstances can bid freely for up to six months. After six months, if the applicant has not made a successful bid, the Council may make a suitable offer of a vacant property anywhere in the district.
15. The Council’s scheme says not all applicants are eligible for certain types of property. It may not offer a property to the applicant with the highest priority in certain defined circumstances. Priority for houses is given to applicants with at least one dependent child under the age of 16 in the household. If an applicant bids for a property for which they are not eligible, the Home Choice account will notify them the bid has been bypassed or skipped.

Miss X’s circumstances

Priority for houses

16. Miss X’s youngest child was 16 in February 2019. Miss X says she was not informed then that she would have less priority for houses so she continued to bid for them.
17. Miss X was the highest ranked bidder for a house she bid for in late July. She says an officer told her she would be allocated this property. But she was then told in mid-August 2020 that her bid was bypassed in favour of a Band B applicant with a later registration date. At that point she was told about the policy to prioritise households with a child under the age of 16 for houses.
18. The Council sent us Miss X’s bidding records for the period from February 2019 until November 2020. This includes the bids Miss X made and the Council’s auto-bids for properties. This evidence shows Miss X bid for 13 houses between February 2019 and 13 August 2020. Two properties were allocated to Band A applicants. Nine were allocated to Band B applicants with an earlier registration date than Miss X. So Miss X did not have priority for these 11 properties.
19. The other two bids were made in July and August 2020 and Miss X was the highest ranked applicant. But as Miss X’s youngest child was over the age of 16, the Council bypassed her bids in favour of Band B applicants with a child under the age of 16.
20. Miss X considers the Council’s policy is unfair. She says her youngest child was under 16 when she joined the Housing Register in 2017. She does not understand why a family with a child aged 15 has priority for houses over a family with a 16 year old. She says three bedroom flats and maisonettes are rarely advertised on Home Choice. The policy has unfair consequences: it means she had to wait longer to be rehoused than applicants in the same priority band with later priority dates.

Analysis

21. We cannot find fault if the Council chooses to give priority for houses to families with a child under the age of 16. Councils have considerable freedom and flexibility to draw up the rules in their housing allocations schemes. So the Council was entitled to adopt this policy.
22. I realise Miss X did not know about this rule until August 2020 so she kept bidding for houses long after her youngest child became 16. But I do not consider the Council was at fault for not informing her about this aspect of its scheme. The Council must publish its housing allocations scheme. It must also give applicants information about the scheme, and their prospects for getting an offer of accommodation, when asked to do so. There is no wider duty for councils to inform individual applicants each time a particular provision in the scheme may affect them. So the Council was not at fault for not telling Miss X her priority for houses changed when her youngest child became 16.
23. I also considered whether Miss X missed the opportunity to bid for any three bedroom flats or maisonettes because she was unaware of this rule. Only one three bedroom maisonette was advertised between February 2019 and August 2020. The Council made an auto-bid for that property but it was allocated to a Band B applicant with an earlier registration date than Miss X. Miss X did not miss the opportunity to be rehoused sooner.
24. Miss X must have been very disappointed to be first in line for the house she bid for in July 2020 only to find out later that it went to a household with a child under 16. But I cannot find fault with the Council’s decision to offer this property to a Band B applicant with a younger child when the allocation scheme allows for that.

Auto-bidding

25. In early November 2019 the Council decided to auto-bid for properties for Miss X. By then Miss X had been in the Housing Trust property for about 18 months and she had not made a successful Home Choice bid.
26. The Council auto-bid for seven properties between December 2019 and October 2020. In this period, only two maisonettes with three bedrooms were advertised. One was allocated to a Band B applicant with greater priority than Miss X. The other one was allocated to Miss X in October 2020.
27. Five of the auto-bids were for houses but Miss X was bypassed in favour of applicants with higher priority or Band B applicants who had children under 16. Miss X continued to bid for her preferred properties at the same time.
28. Miss X became the tenant of a three bedroom maisonette in November 2020. She says she would not have chosen this property because it is not in her preferred location. She only accepted it because the Council would not make another offer.
29. Miss X says the Council should have told her when it decided to start auto-bidding. The Council says it was not its practice at that time to inform applicants. But it does now tell applicants when it accepts the prevention or relief duty that this may happen if the applicant does not make a successful bid within six months.

Analysis

30. The Council’s allocations scheme says officers may auto-bid for properties for certain applicants who have not made a successful bid on Home Choice within six months. That did not stop Miss X continuing to bid for houses of her choice. But it meant she was also considered for other three bedroom properties.
31. It was not fault for the Council to start auto-bidding when Miss X had not successfully bid for a property after 18 months in the Housing Trust property. The allocations scheme allows that to happen. Although the Council did not inform Miss X about the decision to start auto-bidding, Miss X would have seen the auto-bids when she logged on to her Home Choice account. And if Miss X had continued to bid only for houses, it is unlikely she would have been rehoused unless no other Band B bidder had children under the age of 16.

Complaint about the suitability of the Housing Trust property

32. Miss X says the Housing Trust flat was too small for her family. Miss X slept in the living room and one of the bedrooms had mould growth on the walls and around windows. She says her family suffered some verbal abuse and other anti-social behaviour from neighbours. She says she complained to the Housing Trust several times but no action was taken. She also mentioned her concerns about the property when she complained to the Council in August 2020.
33. The Council says it nominated Miss X to the Housing Trust in 2018 under its powers to prevent homelessness. It did not accept one of the accommodation duties under the homelessness provisions in Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996. Therefore it did not have a legal duty to ensure the accommodation was suitable for Miss X’s needs. And Miss X did not have the right to request a review of the suitability of the property. The Council says it would have considered the property met the suitability requirements if it had been provided under one of the homelessness accommodation duties.
34. The Housing Trust, as Miss X’s landlord, was responsible for investigating her concerns about mould in the flat and anti-social behaviour by other tenants.

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Final decision

35. I have completed the investigation and found no evidence of fault by the Council.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman