Sevenoaks District Council (20 006 682)
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Ms X’s complaint that the Council will not reimburse her for accommodation costs she paid for a homeless friend. It was Ms X’s choice to meet these costs and she is not therefore directly caused an injustice by the alleged Council fault.
The complaint
- Ms X paid for accommodation for her homeless friend after she says the Council failed to provide him with temporary accommodation. Ms X complains the Council will not now reimburse her for her costs.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- 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’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe the alleged fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
- I have considered what Ms X said in her complaint. I sent Ms X my draft decision on the complaint and have considered her comments in response.
What I found
- Ms X paid for accommodation for her homeless friend after she says the Council failed to provide him with temporary accommodation. Ms X complains the Council will not now reimburse her for her costs.
Analysis
- It was Ms X’s personal choice to pay for accommodation for her friend and as such the alleged fault by the Council cannot be said to have directly caused Ms X an injustice. We cannot therefore achieve the outcome Ms X seeks, which is for the Council to make a payment to her for her costs.
- For these reasons, we will not investigate.
Final decision
- My decision is that the Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint. This is because the alleged Council fault did not directly impact upon Ms X and we cannot achieve the outcome Ms X seeks.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman