Summary: We have upheld Mr X’s complaint about the preference date on his housing register application. The Council has agreed to take appropriate steps to remedy the injustice caused.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about the Council’s management of empty properties in its area and its failure to reinstate the effective date for his priority on its housing register to 2020, which he says it promised to do. Mr X says the Council’s failures mean he is waiting longer for social housing than he should do.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

What happened

5. Mr X was on the Council’s housing register from 2020 with band 2A, based on the family being short of two bedrooms.
6. In 2023 he made a homelessness application. The Council eventually accepted a main housing duty in early December 2024. We found fault with the Council for delays in its decision-making (amongst other things) in a previous decision.
7. The Council amended the preference date for Mr X’s housing register application to December 2024, which was the date it accepted a main duty. Its allocation scheme says:
• if an applicant moves from band 1 to 2, they keep the earlier preference date;
• applicants in bands 1 and 2 must be given a “reasonable preference” and “it is considered fairest that they do not lose time spent waiting in a reasonable preference category if they move to band 2 … The preference date will be the earliest date the applicant was in [a] reasonable preference category”;
• if an applicant moves from band 1 or 2 they keep the earlier preference date.
8. The scheme is silent on the position where an applicant remains in band 2 but the reasonable preference category changes from overcrowded to homeless.
9. In its complaint response, the Council said it changed the preference date to the date it accepted a main duty because the “intention was to treat all applicants fairly, so no-one feels compelled to pursue a homelessness application simply to retain or improve their position where their needs have already been recognised”. It went on to say it would consider backdating Mr X’s preference date to the original 2020 date if Mr X provided evidence to confirm he remained overcrowded by two bedrooms.
10. Mr X also asked the Council to make a direct offer to him of one of several vacant properties he identified that he said would meet his needs. The Council said it could only make a direct offer in urgent or exceptional cases and his case did not meet its criteria for doing so.

My assessment

11. If we investigated further, it is likely we would find fault with the Council for changing the preference date from 2020 to 2024. The published allocations scheme does not specifically require this and the implication of the wording of the scheme (as set out in paragraph 8 above) is that the preference date should be the earliest date the applicant was in a reasonable preference category which, for Mr X, was 2020. This fault caused Mr X avoidable time and trouble pursuing the Council to out matters right and also reduced his chance of successfully bidding on social housing during the period the preference date was recorded as 2024.
12. We asked the Council to take steps to remedy the injustice caused and it agreed to take the following action within one month of the date of this decision:
• apologise to Mr X in line with our guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice;
• provide guidance to relevant staff to ensure the same approach is taken in other cases where the band remains the same but the reasonable preference category changes unless and until it has amended its allocations scheme to set out clearly a different position for such cases.
13. The Council provided evidence it has now changed the preference date to 2020.
14. The Council has confirmed Mr X did not miss an offer during the period where his preference date was incorrect. It told us applicants in band 2 typically wait 12 years for a 3 bedroom property
15. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the Council’s management of vacant properties. It is for the Council to decide how best to manage its housing stock.
16. We will not investigate the Council’s decision not to make a direct offer to Mr X because there is insufficient evidence of fault in its decision-making.

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Final decision

17. We have upheld the complaint about Mr X’s preference date. The Council has taken appropriate action to remedy the injustice caused.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman