Summary: There was fault by the Council in how it handled Mrs X’s temporary accommodation charges. It credited housing benefit to the wrong accounts, its communications with her were unclear, it did not always respond properly to her contact, and it took too long to respond to her complaint about this. The Council’s shortcomings have caused Mrs X and her family distress, confusion, and frustration, and have put her to unnecessary time and trouble trying to resolve the issues. I have recommended the Council take action to remedy the impact on her.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complains that the Council:
• did not properly allocate payments to her temporary accommodation rent account.
• did not give her sufficient information about her accounts so that she could manage the situation, and then told her that she owed over £5,000 and her housing benefit had been overpaid.
• did not respond to her queries and complaints about this effectively or in good time.
2. Mrs X says this has caused distress and frustration, and rent arrears appear to have accrued when they had tried to avoid this.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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’. 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)
4. 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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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information provided by Mrs X and discussed the issues with her representative. I considered the information provided by the Council including its file documents. I also considered the law and guidance set out below. Both parties had the opportunity to comment on a draft of this statement. I have considered the comments of both parties before issuing this final decision.

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What I found

6. Housing Benefit (HB) helps eligible people on low incomes pay their rent and the Council manages and pays this. The Housing Benefit Regulations 2006 (the Regulations) set out the rules councils must follow for calculating and paying HB. Usually the Council pays the tenant HB; it is responsible for paying the rent to the person’s landlord.
7. If a council pays too much HB to someone, it will usually ask them to repay it. The law says the council can recover overpayment unless it was caused by an official error and it was not reasonable to expect the person to realise they were receiving too much benefit. If someone disagrees with a decision that they must repay an overpayment they can appeal to the tribunal.

What happened

8. The Council provided Mrs X and her family with temporary accommodation. There have been several different addresses. It took some months to organise HB. When the HB award was made, it did not cover all of the rent. The Council told her that she owed £460 and she paid this over the phone that day.
9. The Council moved Mrs X to further temporary accommodation addresses. Each time, Mrs X claimed HB but it took some time to decide the claim.
10. At the beginning of February, the Council told Mrs X, that after HB payments, she owed £206 for the period up to 26 February. Mrs X paid this.
11. However the Council later told her that she owed further arrears from various rent accounts, and it could not trace the two payments she had made. Mrs X queried this with the Council twice, but receiving no explanation, she complained to the Council on 11 July 2023.
12. The Council responded on 9 August. It said:

• It was sorry that it had taken longer than anticipated to respond and this was due to high workloads
• It had received the two rent payments but Mrs X had quoted the wrong payment reference number and this is why the officer dealing with her enquiry could not find the payments.
• It did not uphold her complaint.

13. On 16 August, Mrs X asked the Council to reconsider. She said the references she had given were the ones the Council had given her. Mrs X sent the Council her bank statements and asked it to give her an updated rent balance due up until the end of July. Mrs X said she was frustrated by the conflicting information the Council had given her.
14. The Council did not respond to Mrs X until 9 October. It again said that it was sorry that it had taken longer than it should to respond to her. It had located the payments and had applied them to the correct accounts. It apologised that Mrs X had got frustrated and had been inconvenienced.
15. During this time, the Council wrote to Mrs X about outstanding overpayments of HB. Mrs X could not understand how the overpayments had arisen and she tells me that she did not receive the HB decision letters or the Council’s letters about overpayments. At the end of November, she asked the Council to review whether the overpayments were recoverable. The Council did not act on Mrs X’s request.
16. In response to my investigation, the Council has reviewed all the rent and HB accounts. It has calculated that the overpaid HB has now been cleared largely by deduction from benefits or by credits from rent accounts. However, the Council has now calculated that Mrs X has rent arrears of over £7,000.
17. In response to my enquiries, the Council has set out how the arrears have accrued. A large part of this is because the Council did not receive HB claims from Mrs X for some of the properties. The Council has offered to help Mrs X make those benefit claims. The rent arrears have also accrued because the HB did not always cover the whole of the weekly temporary accommodation charge. The deficit was either because the Council was recovering overpaid HB, or because it was making deductions from the HB due to her adult daughter’s earnings.

Was there fault by the Council causing injustice to Mrs X?

18. In response to my investigation, the Council has acknowledged that it did not respond to Mrs X’s request for a review of how the overpayments of HB had arisen and if these are recoverable. It has now done this, but the Council has not set out the conclusions of its review of the overpayments to Mrs X. This is particularly important as Mrs X says she did not receive the Council’s letters about HB overpayments, nor about how much rent she should pay for the various addresses.
19. The Council also acknowledged that it did not always credit HB to the correct rent accounts; it did not always communicate properly with Mrs X and explain what was happening with the rent accounts; and it took too long to close some tenancies so that rent arrears accrued.
20. I further note that it has been difficult to determine what Mrs X owes, and the Council cannot match its own manual calculations with the computer-generated calculations. However, the discrepancy is small and the Council is collecting only the lower amount. Overall, I am now satisfied that the Council has properly investigated and explained why the rent arrears are due.
21. Mrs X was helped by family with the administration of her HB and rent accounts. The family tried hard to keep up to date with payments, and with the various accounts. However, the accounts became very confusing. I can appreciate the situation was complicated due to frequent changes of address, and to some extent some fluctuation in HB entitlement. However, this was further compounded by the Council’s shortcomings. Its poor communication caused Mrs X confusion, distress, and frustration. She and her family were also put to unnecessary time and trouble pursuing matters when the Council took too long to respond to her complaints, or did not respond properly to other contact about the issues raised.

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Agreed action

22. The Council will within one month of the date of this decision:
• Apologise to Mrs X. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The organisation should consider this guidance in making the apology I have recommended in my findings.
• Write to Mrs X setting out how it has reviewed the HB overpayments, and the conclusions of the review.
• Offer Mrs X assistance to claim HB for the periods when there was no claim, and process the claim without delay.
• Pay to Mrs X a symbolic payment of £200 in recognition of the distress, frustration, and confusion its shortcomings caused her.
• Pay to Mrs X a symbolic payment of £250 in recognition of the time and trouble she was put to pursuing matters with the Council.
23. For clarity, the Council should not offset symbolic payments against any remaining rent arrears.
24. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

25. I have completed my investigation. There was fault by the Council causing injustice to Mrs X.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman