Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s investigation of disrepair in his private rented home. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

The complaint

1. Mr X complained about the Council’s failure to serve an improvement notice on his private landlord after he reported repeated occasions of intermittent hot water loss over the past year. He wants the Council to take action against his landlord for the periods of inconvenience.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

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

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My assessment

5. Mr X lives in a private rented property and says that he has suffered loss of hot water on over 120 non-consecutive days since November 2023. He reported the problem to the Council and it carried out two inspections of the property meeting him and communicating with the management agents.
6. Councils have a duty to investigate complaints of private housing disrepair under the provisions of the Housing Act 2004. If any category 1 hazards are identified under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) then the Council should issue either a hazard awareness notice or an improvement notice where the landlord fails to comply with an officer’s repair requirements.
7. The Council responded to Mr X’s requests for an investigation and inspected the property. It did not discover any hazards which were enforceable under the HHSRS requirements and so it could not serve a hazard awareness notice. Because there was no fault with the hot water system when it inspected, the Council did not serve an improvement notice. It not have evidence of disrepair which would make any grounds for a notice valid. Without this any notice issued would be easily appealed by the landlord at the First Tier Tribunal.
8. The Ombudsman is not an appeal body. This means we do not take a second look at a decision to decide if it was wrong. Instead, we look at the processes an organisation followed to make its decision. If we consider it followed those processes correctly, we cannot question whether the decision was right or wrong, regardless of whether someone disagrees with the decision the organisation made.
9. If Mr X believes he and other tenants have sufficient evidence to take a disrepair action against the landlord they may do so under the provisions of the landlord and Tenant Act 1985 which enables tenants to take legal action over disrepair claims.

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Final decision

10. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s investigation of disrepair in his private rented home. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman