Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about events related to Mr X’s housing. Mr X could reasonably have used his right to take court action about the homelessness decision. On other points about the homelessness process, it is unlikely we would achieve more, and it would be disproportionate to investigate the Council’s communications in isolation. We cannot investigate the Council’s management of its social housing. We are already investigating a separate complaint about Mr X’s housing register application, so we shall not consider that as part of this complaint.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about the Council’s handling of matters relating to his housing, especially his homelessness application.

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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. We cannot investigate complaints about the provision or management of social housing by a council acting as a registered social housing provider. (Local Government Act 1974, paragraph 5A schedule 5, as amended)
4. 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)
5. 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: any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by the complainant and copy correspondence from the Council.
7. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

8. Mr X made a homelessness application. The Council decided Mr X was not homeless because, it argued, he could reasonably remain in his current accommodation. Mr X used his right to have the Council review its decision. The Council’s review upheld the decision and told Mr X about his right to appeal to the county court on a point of law. I understand Mr X did not go to court.
9. Some parts of Mr X’s complaint concern the Council’s actions while it was considering the homelessness application. Mr X complains:
• In a meeting about the application, the nature of a Council officer’s questions seemed inappropriate and the officer’s attitude seemed dismissive of Mr X and biased against Mr X’s homelessness application.
• The Council had said it would not decide the application until after officers visited Mr X’s property to assess disrepair. However, the Council then decided the application before that visit.
• The Council did not consult Mr X’s doctor or consider his medical records.
• The Council did not take account of some medical conditions Mr X and his general practitioner believe he is likely to have because Mr X does not have formal diagnoses. Mr X considers this wrong as he is on a waiting list for diagnosis and he cannot control how long he might wait.
10. The main impact of these points on Mr X is they relate to the homelessness decision and Mr X believes the Council’s actions here led the Council to decide wrongly that he was not homeless. If Mr X disagreed with the Council, he had the right to appeal to the county court on a point of law. The points at issue relate to whether it was reasonable, as set out in homelessness law, for Mr X remain in his housing and therefore whether Mr X was legally homeless. Those are points of law. Therefore the restriction in paragraph 4 applies.
11. The law expressly provides this route for challenging such decisions, so we normally expect people to use it. The court can make a binding decision and overturn the Council’s decision if it sees fit, unlike the Ombudsman. There might be a cost to court action, but that is not in itself automatically a reason to consider court action unreasonable. Also, applicants can get help with court costs if they are eligible. Mr X has described various conditions, including mental health conditions. I appreciate those might have caused some difficulty taking court action. However, Mr X has been able to raise matters with the Council and the Ombudsman. He could have sought help with court action if necessary. And he could have asked the court to make any reasonable adjustments he considered necessary. Overall, I consider it would have been reasonable for Mr X to have used his right to go to court when he had it.
12. The Council invited Mr X to a meeting with a homelessness officer without telling him it had arranged for other officers to be present. The Council apologised and raised this with the officer responsible. I appreciate the unexpected presence of officers dealing with other matters would have been concerning for Mr X, especially given some difficulties he has. However, if we investigated this, we would be unlikely to recommend significantly more than the Council has already done. So it would be disproportionate to investigate this point.
13. Mr X says there were communication failures throughout the process, causing him stress and affecting his ability to engage with the Council. It is not a good use of resources to try to investigate a Council’s communications about a matter when we are not investigating the substantive matter itself (the Council’s homelessness decision).
14. Mr X says the Council has given him contradictory information about whether he would have to move out of his home or remove furniture for the Council to do repairs. This point concerns the Council’s management of its social housing, so we cannot consider it, as paragraph 3 explained.
15. I mentioned above that Mr X is awaiting diagnosis of some medical conditions. Mr X reports the Council will not take account of those conditions until he has a diagnosis. As far as this relates to the Council’s consideration of medical matters when deciding the homelessness application, I have dealt with that above. As far as this concerns the Mr X’s priority on the Council’s housing register for moving to alternative social housing, we are already investigating a separate complaint from PA about the Council’s handling of his application to move. So I shall not consider that point here.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman