Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a homelessness application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about the Council’s failure to offer him emergency accommodation when his landlord serve a s.21 possession notice on him. He says he is disabled and the Council should not have decided to wait until a possession order was issued.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide:

• there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or
• we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

5. Mr X says his landlord issued him with a s.21 notice to quit. He says he is disabled and that he should not need to have to wait until the notice expires and a possession order is sought by his landlord before the Council provides him with accommodation.
6. Mr X submitted a homelessness application and the Council accepted the prevention duty for him which requires it to seek to prevent an applicant from losing their accommodation. The Council sought the required documents from Mr X about his tenancy to ensure that the notice he had been served was valid. Mr X and the landlord could not provide a copy of the ‘How to Rent’ leaflet from the landlord confirming that his deposit was protected in a government approved tenancy deposit scheme. The Council advised him and his representative that without this element of evidence it could not accept that he has been served with a valid notice.
7. The Council told Mr X’s representative at the time of complaining to us that it could not accept that there was sufficient evidence that Mr X is threatened with homelessness within 56 days for it to trigger the Relief duty which may require it to provide emergency interim accommodation. If the notice is invalid the landlord would be required to issue a new notice once he has complied.
8. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.

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Final decision

9. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a homelessness application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman