The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to take action Against a private landlord over allegations of tenancy harassment. Some of the matters referred to by the complainant are outside the normal 12-month period for investigating complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Mrs X could not have complained to us sooner. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s response to other matters which would warrant an investigation.
The complaint
Mrs X complained about the Council’s failure to take action against her private landlord over incidents she has reported over a number of years. She says her tenancy is threatened because her landlord has served a possession notice on her recently after attempts to evict her illegally in the past. She also says the Council disclosed information about her complaint to the landlord’s agent which breached data protection regulations.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
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 about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide: there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A (6), as amended, section 34(B)))
How I considered this complaint
I considered the information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mrs X says she has suffered from incidents by her private landlord and agents over the past years. She says she was verbally abused by an employee for the landlord in 2021 and that the employee swore in front of her child. She involved the Police and reported the matter to the Council. The matter was about parking and was not a threat to her tenancy. She also says she had a disagreement in 2020 with the agents concerning the CCTV system.
More recently Mrs X has reported that she was issued with a rent increase notification and a possession notice which she says is following her landlord’s attempt to evict her by other illegal means. The Council says it has not received sufficient evidence from Mrs X which meets the threshold for it to consider a prosecution under the Protection from Eviction Act legislation.
We will not exercise discretion to consider the matters which Mrs X has described as harassment in 2020 and 2021. These were received outside the normal 12-month period for investigating complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr X could not have complained to us sooner. The time for receiving complaints is from when someone became aware of the matter they wish to complain about, not when they complained to the Council or it issued its final response. We would expect someone to complain to us within a year, even if they were dissatisfied with the time the complaints procedure was taking.
If Mrs X believes the Council has disclosed her personal data to a third party without her consent she could complain to the office of the Information Commissioner which is the proper authority to consider such data breaches.
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. In this case the Council has to decide if there are sufficient grounds for it to consider prosecuting a landlord for illegal eviction. In this case it does not believe the landlord’s actions warrant this.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s failure to take action Against a private landlord over allegations of tenancy harassment. Some of the matters referred to by the complainant are outside the normal 12-month period for investigating complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Mrs X could not have complained to us sooner. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s response to other matters which would warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman