The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the priority given to Ms X’s housing application. The complaint is late without good reason to accept it now. Even if that was not the case, there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making.
The complaint
Ms X complains the Council has not given enough priority to her housing register application. She says this has resulted in increased stress from having to remain in unsuitable living conditions.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate. 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) 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 the decision making, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and copy complaint correspondence from the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Ms X knew in 2017 which priority banding the Council had given her application. In August 2020, after she requested medical priority, the Council told her it had given her application reasonable preference on medical grounds, rather than the higher ‘emergency’ lvl of medical priority. MS X had the right to ask the Council to review that decision then, which she did not use. Ms X did not complain to the Council until June 2021 and did not complain to us until July 2022. So the restriction in paragraph 2 applies.
Ms X did not need to know all the details of the allocations policy or the Council’s consideration of her requests to know that she had not been given high priority and to complain about that. So it appears Ms X could reasonably have complained several years ago. Even if Ms X only thought in 2021 the Council had done something wrong, there was still no complaint to us within 12 months. After the Council did not uphold Ms X’s complaint at stage 1, Ms X delayed from July to December 2021 escalating her complaint to stage 2, and delayed again from February to July 2022 complaining to us after the Council’s final response.
I appreciate Ms X’s disabilities might affect how quickly could complain. However, I am not persuaded there is good reason now to try to investigate decisions the Council told Ms X about in 2017 and 2020.
Even if Ms X had complained to us in time, or if there was good reason to accept a late complaint, we would still not investigate this complaint. This is because: The Council’s responses to Ms X show the Council considered Ms X’s medical information and its policy, then decided the impact of Ms X’s housing on her medical conditions and disabilities was not significant enough to warrant the higher level of medical priority.
Ms X also told the Council her current address is statutorily overcrowded. The Council explained it had no evidence of that from the information it had about the number of rooms available to Ms X’s household and the number of people in the household.
The Council’s decisions on those points seem properly reached so, while Ms X is entitled to disagree with the Council, I cannot criticise those decisions, as paragraph 3 explained.
The Council told Ms X how she could submit any new medical evidence for consideration and how to update the details if the information about the number of people and rooms in her household has changed. I see no fault in that. If Ms X supplies new information, the Council will need to consider whether it should change her application’s priority.
Final decision
We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because the complaint is late and because there is not enough evidence of fault in the Council’s decision-making.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman