Summary: Mr X complained that he remained living in unsuitable temporary accommodation for over 12 months, despite the Council agreeing to move him. He also complained about delay in the Council’s complaints process. We upheld both parts of the complaint, finding the Council at fault for not re-housing Mr X sooner and for delay in responding to his complaint. These faults caused distress to Mr X and meant he lived in unsuitable accommodation for far longer than he should have. The Council has accepted these findings. At the end of this statement, I set out action the Council has agreed to remedy this injustice caused to Mr X and improve its service.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained the Council left him living in unsuitable temporary accommodation, despite having agreed to move him. He also complained about delays in the Council’s complaints process.
2. Mr X said this had caused him significant distress. In particular, that he felt unsafe while living in the temporary accommodation being the victim of aggression and threats from another resident. This made worse existing mental health conditions he had.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. The Ombudsman’s view, based on caselaw, is that ‘service failure’ is an objective, factual question about what happened. A finding of service failure does not imply blame, intent or bad faith by the council involved. There may be circumstances where we decide service failure has occurred and caused an injustice to the complainant despite the best efforts of the council. This still amounts to fault. (R (on the application of ER) v CLA (LGO) [2014] EWCA civ 1407) 
5. 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 significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
6. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended)
7. If we are satisfied with an organisation’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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What I did and did not investigate

8. The start date of my investigation was April 2023, when the Council provided Mr X with temporary accommodation. In his complaint form, Mr X referred also to earlier events. I did not investigate these as I considered any complaint about events before April 2023 would be a late complaint. I did not consider there were any special reasons that would justify investigating those earlier events (see paragraph 6 above).
9. The end date for my investigation was January 2025. Mr X complained to us in September 2024, when still living in the temporary accommodation he complained about. He later accepted an offer of alternative temporary accommodation in January 2025. I considered the period October 2024 to January 2025 as part of my investigation, focused solely on the narrow issue of Mr X remaining in temporary accommodation. I did not investigate any complaint about the suitability of the alternative temporary accommodation offered to Mr X in January 2025.

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How I considered this complaint

10. I considered evidence provided by Mr X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
11. I gave Mr X and the Council chance to comment on a draft version of this decision statement. I took account of any comments they made, or further evidence they provided, before issuing this final decision statement.

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What I found

Relevant law on homelessness

12. Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and the Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities set out councils’ powers and duties to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness.
13. If a council finds an applicant is homeless, eligible for assistance, and has a priority need, it must secure accommodation for their occupation (unless it refers the application to another housing authority). (Housing Act 1996, section 193 and Homelessness Code of Guidance 15.39)
14. Homeless applicants may request a review within 21 days of certain decisions taken by the Council when discharging its duties under homelessness legislation. This includes where it has secured temporary accommodation and the applicant considers it is unsuitable. The Council has eight weeks to complete the review (Housing Act 1996, Section 202(1)(f)).
15. The council must tell the applicant in writing, the outcome of their review. It must give reasons in writing if it confirms “its original decision on any issue against the interests of the applicant” (Homelessness Code of Guidance, 19.29).
16. If the Council agrees on review that accommodation is unsuitable it is then under a duty to find alternative accommodation. That duty is immediate, non-deferrable and unqualified (see Elkundi, R (On the application of) v Birmingham City Council [2022] EWCA Civ 601).

The Council’s complaints process

17. The Council says at stage one of its complaints process that it will acknowledge the complaint within three working days. Following this it says it will investigate and respond to the complaint within 20 working days. If it finds the issue complicated it says it may take longer. But it will let the complainant know it needs more time to investigate and respond.

Summary of the key events

18. The Council made Mr X an offer of temporary accommodation in April 2023 as it owed him the full homelessness duty. He had recently been released from prison. It offered him a self-contained bedsit in a house around 20 miles from its area, that also had a common room. The Council considered the property suitable.
19. Mr X accepted the offer. But he requested a review of the suitability on the same day the Council offered it. The Council acknowledged receiving the review in early June 2023.
20. Mr X’s grounds for review were:

• that he had multiple health issues;
• that the accommodation was too far from where he had family members who could support him.

21. The Council responded to the review request the following month. Its review form noted the Council had liaised with Mr X’s probation officer. It also noted that its review officer had received an email from an officer in the Council’s housing service. This said Mr X’s accommodation was “NOT suitable” (emphasis as per original). It recorded the reason being that Mr X should not be in accommodation with shared areas. The Council told the reviewing officer it would offer Mr X alternative accommodation.
22. The Council next wrote to Mr X in the following terms:

• that it would now make him an offer of alternative accommodation;
• that the review of his temporary accommodation was therefore ‘academic’;
• that it had closed his case.

23. Mr X contacted the Council in September 2023 and said it had not yet offered him alternative accommodation. There is no record the Council replied.
24. Mr X was in contact with the Council around December 2023 when a query arose about rent arrears for a time he was in prison.
25. Mr X complained to the Council in May 2024. He remained in the same temporary accommodation. He repeated it was too far from any family support he had. He also complained it was too small and other residents in the property caused disturbance and conflict. Mr X said these conditions were bad for his mental health and caused him to self-harm. There also remained confusion around the rent arrears which he disputed.
26. The Council wrote to Mr X towards the end of May 2024. It agreed to write-off some of his rent arrears for a time when he was in prison.
27. At the end of July 2024, the Council asked Mr X several questions about his current circumstances. It said it would respond to his complaint once he replied.
28. Shortly after the Council provided Mr X with details of a potential property. But the housing provider then withdrew the property. This was because of a risk to Mr X’s safety as the property had three other vulnerable residents.
29. The Council responded to Mr X’s complaint in early August 2024. It said:
• it should have moved Mr X to alternative accommodation quickly; it apologised for not doing so; and
• it had resolved the issue around rent arrears. It had incorrectly charged Mr X for rent while in prison.
30. The Council provided us with details of multiple other properties it checked between September 2024 and January 2025. It found it could not offer these to Mr X after taking advice from the police or probation service, or because of the housing provider’s conditions of letting.
31. The Council offered Mr X alternative temporary accommodation in January 2025 which he accepted. He requested a review of its suitability the following month.
32. Mr X provided me emails and text messages showing that between July and November 2024 he alerted the Council to other incidents of disturbance or conflict in the temporary accommodation. He reiterated this triggered a deterioration in his mental health. Also, that his room was small and subject to regular inspection, which reminded him of a prison cell and this was further bad for his mental health.

Findings - was there fault by the Council causing injustice?

33. When the Council first offered Mr X the temporary accommodation in April 2023, it considered it suitable. I do not fault that decision. There is no evidence the Council did not take that decision in good faith. So, it genuinely understood it to be suitable for Mr X at the time.
34. But there was fault in what happened after Mr X asked for a review of the suitability of the accommodation.
35. First, the Council was at fault for delay. It took more than eight weeks to decide the review.
36. Second, it issued a confusing decision letter. The letter did not engage with Mr X’s reasons for seeking a review and why he thought his temporary accommodation unsuitable. Nor did it comment on the Council’s view of suitability.
37. During this investigation the Council told us that despite the letter promising Mr X it would search for alternative accommodation, it considered the accommodation remained ‘legally suitable’ for him. If this was the Council’s position at the time, then its letter clearly failed to follow advice in the homelessness code of guidance quoted in paragraph 15. For the Council should have explained why it considered the property suitable and told Mr X of his right to a further potential review to the County Court.
38. However, I did not accept this was the Council’s position at the time. This was because the contemporaneous email referred to in paragraph 21, said the opposite. It clearly said Mr X’s temporary accommodation was “not suitable” for him. It was not relevant to my investigation, why the Council reached this view; i.e. whether it agreed with Mr X’s reasons for finding it unsuitable or relied on other reasons. The key point was the Council found the temporary accommodation unsuitable for Mr X. That is why the reviewing officer went on to tell Mr X his review request had become ‘academic’.
39. The Council was further at fault for not then securing alternative temporary accommodation for Mr X as promised. It took it 18 months to identify this. For the first 12 months it did nothing at all to search for any alternative, as it has recognised.
40. From August 2024 onward I found the Council had made efforts to find alternative temporary accommodation for Mr X. Before it could secure this it had to take account of Mr X’s criminal conviction. It had to check with police and probation services if they saw grounds to reject any potential properties it might offer him. It also needed to check the housing provider’s terms of letting. I found these checks resulted in it not pursuing several potential properties for Mr X. However, despite these efforts by the Council it was still a service failing that it could not find alternative accommodation for Mr X before January 2025. Which meant it remained at fault until that time.
41. These faults caused Mr X significant injustice. He had to live in unsuitable temporary accommodation for 21 months. In particular I noted the impact on Mr X of living in a property with shared facilities and that he encountered conflict with another resident, harmful to his mental health. In addition, the Council’s failure to move Mr X having said it would do so, caused him understandably to feel ignored and abandoned. I considered but for the Council’s faults Mr X should not have been in the temporary accommodation for more than two months (see paragraph 16) and so he would not have experienced this.
42. Turning to Mr X’s complaint about delays in the Council’s complaints process, I set out in paragraph 17 the Council's timescales for response. Mr X complained in May 2024 and the Council did not reply until August 2024. I recognised some mitigation as the Council wanted more information before it could reply to Mr X’s complaint, which it asked for in July. But it could have asked for that information sooner, and its reply still fell outside of its published timescale. That was a fault, which caused some additional distress to Mr X.

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Agreed Action

Personal remedy

43. The Council has accepted my findings set out above. It has agreed that to remedy Mr X’s injustice, it will, within 20 working days of a decision on this complaint:
1. provide an apology to Mr X accepting the findings of this investigation (see paragraph 44 also);
2. make a symbolic payment to Mr X of £2850 (see paragraph 45 for explanation).
44. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The Council should consider this guidance in making its apology to Mr X.
45. Our guidance on remedies explains how we will typically recommend symbolic payments where we uphold complaints from people who have lived in unsuitable temporary accommodation for too long, because of Council fault. This says that our minimum payment for such injustice will usually be £150 a month. I considered this sum appropriate here taking account of the impact of the temporary accommodation on Mr X. The payment to Mr X therefore represents this amount multiplied by the 19 months Mr X lived in unsuitable temporary accommodation beyond the initial two months where the Council could reasonably have believed the accommodation suitable. I considered the apology alone sufficient for the injustice arising from the delay in the Council’s complaint handling.

Service improvement

46. I also wanted the Council to learn lessons from this complaint. It has agreed therefore that within two months of a decision on this complaint it will remind all staff (or contractors) who carry out reviews of the suitability of accommodation, that they need to ensure:

• decision letters clearly set out whether the Council finds the accommodation suitable or unsuitable; and
• where the Council decides accommodation is suitable it must tell the applicant of their right to appeal to the County Court.

47. The Council will provide us with evidence when it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

48. For reasons set out above I upheld this complaint finding fault by the Council caused injustice to Mr X. The Council accepted this finding and agreed action that I considered would remedy that injustice. Consequently, I completed my investigation satisfied with its response.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman