Summary: The Council was at fault for delay identifying Miss X might be homeless. It lost one of her applications for housing and took too long to award the correct band on its housing register. As a result, Miss X missed an offer of housing and experienced avoidable distress and frustration when she needed to move to escape domestic abuse. The Council has agreed to apologise, make a payment to Miss X and act to improve its services.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained about the Council’s handling of her housing and homelessness applications when she needed to move because of domestic abuse. In particular, Miss X says:
1. She had to apply three times before the Council processed her application to join the housing register.
2. When it processed her application, the Council awarded the wrong priority band.
3. Errors in the Council’s Choice Based Letting system meant she could not bid on properties.
4. A property was mis-advertised, meaning she bid on a property which did not meet her needs and missed out on one which did.
5. The Council delayed identifying that she might be homeless.
2. As a result, Miss X says she remained living in a property where she was at risk of domestic abuse for longer than necessary and experienced avoidable distress and uncertainty.

Back to top

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)

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the complaint and the information Miss X provided.
6. I made written enquiries of the Council and considered its response along with relevant law and guidance.
7. I referred to the Ombudsman's Guidance on Remedies, a copy of which can be found on our website.
8. Ms X and the organisation had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

Back to top

What I found

Homelessness law and guidance

9. Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and the Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities (the Code) set out councils’ powers and duties to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness.
10. If someone contacts a council seeking accommodation or help to obtain accommodation and gives ‘reason to believe’ they ‘may be’ homeless or threatened with homelessness within 56 days, the council has a duty to make inquiries into what, if any, further duty it owes them. The threshold for triggering the duty to make inquiries is low. The person does not have to complete a specific form or approach a particular department of the council. (Housing Act 1996, section 184 and Homelessness Code of Guidance paragraphs 6.2 and 18.5)
11. If councils are satisfied applicants are homeless and eligible for assistance, they must take reasonable steps to secure accommodation. This is called the relief duty. When a council decides this duty has come to an end, it must notify the applicant in writing. The relief duty lasts 56 days. (Housing Act 1996, section 189B)
12. If, at the end of the relief duty, a council is satisfied an applicant is homeless, eligible for assistance, and has a priority need the council has a duty to secure that accommodation is available for their occupation. This is called the main housing duty. (Housing Act 1996, section 193)

Allocations

13. Every local housing authority must publish an allocations scheme that sets out how it prioritises housing applicants, and its procedures for allocating properties.  All allocations must be made in strict accordance with the published scheme. (Housing Act 1996, section 166A(1) & (14))
14. The Council operates a choice-based lettings scheme. This means housing applicants can express an interest in available properties. This is called bidding.
15. The Council places applicants who qualify to join the housing register into four priority bands: Low Housing Need, Medium Housing Need, High Housing Need and Priority Housing Need. This priority is the first factor the Council uses to allocate a property.
16. The effective band date is the date on which the Council placed the application into the band. This can be different from the registration date if an applicant’s circumstances change, and they attract a higher housing need band after registration. This date is important because the Council uses it to decide priority within a band. For example, if there are three bids for a property from applicants with High Band, the applicant with the oldest effective band date will be highest on the list.
17. The Council’s scheme says applicants who move into the Priority Housing Need band because the Council owes them a homelessness duty have their effective band date backdated to the date the council accepted the duty.
18. So far as is relevant to this complaint, the Council awards Medium Housing Need to applicants who:
• Are owed the prevention duty
• Are homeless but not owed a main housing duty
• Are overcrowded by one bedroom
• Need to move for medical reasons
• Need to move for welfare reasons.
19. So are as is relevant to this complaint, the Council awards High Housing Need to applicants who:
• Have two or more needs from Medium Housing Need band
• Are severely overcrowded (lacking two or more bedrooms)
20. So far as is relevant to this complaint, the Council awards Priority Housing Need to applicants who:
• Are owed the main housing duty
• Are owed the relief duty
• Need to move for emergency welfare reasons, including domestic abuse

What happened

21. At the time relevant to this complaint, Miss X was pregnant. She experienced domestic abuse from her baby’s father.
22. Miss X says she first applied to join the Council’s housing register in March 2023. Miss X has an application reference number in an email dated from this time. The Council says it has no record of this application. It says the likeliest explanation is that Miss X did not complete her application within 10 days. After 10 days, it deletes all incomplete applications.
23. In April, a children’s social worker wrote a letter to the Council in support of Miss X’s need to move to keep her and her baby safe. Miss X says she got this letter at the request of the Council to support her housing application. The Council says it has no record of any housing or homelessness applications from Miss X before May.
24. In May, Miss X applied again to the Council’s housing register. The Council says this application went onto its “test” system instead of the “live” system. As a result, Miss X thought she had applied, but the Council had no way of knowing she had done so. In this application, Miss X said she needed to move because of domestic abuse. The evidence shows Miss X contacted the Council in May to ask about uploading documents in support of her application. The Council advised her to start a new application.
25. In June, Miss X applied again. At this point, the Council found the earlier application on the test system. It asked Miss X for information to support her application. Miss X provided the letter from the social worker. At the end of June and in early July she sent further supporting information.
26. In mid-July, the Council awarded Miss X Medium Housing Need band. As she was now six months pregnant, she qualified for three-bedroom properties. The Council backdated Miss X’s effective date to the date of her May application.
27. The Council’s records show Miss X called the Council the same day to discuss her housing situation. The Council says it offered Miss X an appointment to do a homelessness assessment the following week. It says it would have asked Miss X if she was safe until the appointment as this is its “standard practice” in cases involving domestic abuse. It referred Miss X to a local domestic abuse service to assess the risk and support Miss X.
28. A few days later, the Council increased Miss X’s band to High Housing Need, recognising that she had two or more needs from Medium Housing Need. The Council completed the homelessness assessment the following day. In the assessment, Miss X described the domestic abuse she faced and emphasised that she needed to move urgently.
29. The domestic abuse charity contacted the Council the next day. It said it had completed a risk assessment with Miss X which indicated a medium to high risk.
30. In late July, Miss X identified two properties which she felt would meet her needs. I will call these Property 1 and Property 2. Both properties were identical and on the same street. Also available was Property 3. Property 3 was a different type of property and Miss X did not think it would meet her needs. All three properties were advertised on the choice-based lettings system by a Housing Association. Property 1 was advertised jointly with Property 3. Property 2 was advertised on its own.
31. Miss X contacted the Council to say she could not bid on the online system. She asked the Council to place bids for her on both Property 1/3 and Property 2. She says she told the Council on the call that she was bidding on both Property 1 and Property 3 because it was not possible to choose only one of them as they were listed together. She said she only wanted to be considered for Property 1 and that she thought the properties had been grouped together incorrectly. The Council said the Housing Association was responsible for the content of the property listings and that she should contact it. Miss X reported the issue to the Housing Association.
32. A few days later, the Housing Association called to offer Miss X Property 3 and said she had been matched to it by the Council. Miss X complained to the Council about this. She said she wanted the Council to fix her application so that she could place her own bids. The Council confirmed to Miss X a few days later that she could now place bids herself. It explained the issue was that because she was pregnant, its system did not register her need for an extra bedroom and this had to be overridden manually by the Council.
33. The Housing Association, in an email to the Council, said Miss X was correct. Property 1 and Property 2 should have been grouped together and Property 3 advertised separately. It said there was no disadvantage to Miss X from this because it would have offered her Property 3 anyway as she was third on the shortlist behind the applicants offered Property 1 and Property 2.
34. At the beginning of August the Council accepted the relief duty. The domestic abuse support worker sent a report to the Council. As a result, the Council increased Miss X’s band on the housing register to Priority Housing Need on emergency welfare grounds. Miss X said she thought this should be backdated to when she applied in March.
35. In mid-August, Miss X was once again unable to bid on three-bedroom properties. She had to ask the Council to bid for her.
36. In early October, the Council accepted the main housing duty to Miss X. At the end of the month, Miss X signed a tenancy for a property she bid on in August.

My findings

37. Miss X says she first applied to the Council’s housing register in March 2023. There is evidence to show Miss X made an application. She provided a copy of an email from the Council with her login details for her online account. She has identical emails from her May and June applications.
38. If Miss X’s application were incomplete, as the Council says, I would expect to see an automated email or other communication to that effect, explaining that she should complete her application within 10 days. Alternatively, I would expect to see communications from May and June confirming those applications were complete and submitted which differ from the email Miss X received in March. There is no evidence showing the May or June applications, which the Council accepts she did complete, resulted in further or different emails acknowledging the application.
39. I find, on balance, that Miss X did have contact with the Council about her housing in March and April. It is unlikely she would have sought a letter from her social worker otherwise. However, the lack of records means I cannot say, even on balance of probability, what Miss X said in her March application or what advice or information the Council provided. The Council’s failure to keep proper records was fault. The resulting uncertainty about what happened, or might have happened, is an injustice to Miss X.
40. Miss X completed an application to the housing register in May. The Council accepts fault for this ending up on its test system. It did not identify this error until June. However, the Council missed an opportunity to identify the problem in May when Miss X said she couldn’t access her application to upload supporting documents. Instead, the Council told her to start again. This was fault. It delayed the Council processing Miss X’s application by a month, which is an injustice.
41. The Code says councils should be alert to applications for social housing that also give rise to homelessness duties. Had the Council properly considered Miss X’s application in May, it would have identified that she might be homeless and referred her for a homeless assessment then. It did not identify Miss X’s potential homelessness when she reapplied in June either. Instead, it did not do so until July and only because Miss X called the Council to ask about it. This was fault. This caused Miss X avoidable distress and uncertainty at an already difficult time. This is an injustice to Miss X.
42. The Council says it “would have” asked Miss X if she was safe until the homelessness appointment as this is its usual practice in cases involving domestic abuse. However, the May and June applications both included domestic abuse as reasons Miss X needed to move. The Council should have acted much more promptly on Miss X’s case to make sure she was safe and arrange a homelessness assessment. Not to have done so was fault. Although it says it “would have” asked her if she was safe in when arranging the appointment in July, there is no evidence that it did so. This was fault.
43. Had the Council considered Miss X’s homelessness in May, it would have accepted the relief duty at that point. The Council’s allocations scheme says applicants owed the relief duty qualify for Priority Housing Need. Therefore, Miss X should have been in the highest priority band from, at the latest, early June 2023. Having actually considered Miss X’s homelessness in July, the Council should have accepted the relief duty and awarded Priority Band shortly after its assessment. The Council did not award this priority until August. This was fault.
44. As a result, Miss X missed out on Property 1 or Property 2. The successful applicants for these properties had High Housing Need band. Miss X would have been in position one on the shortlist were it not for the Council’s delay identifying she was homeless. But for this fault, the advertising of Property 3 would not have affected Miss X. She missed out on an opportunity to access safe and suitable housing several months earlier than she did. This is a significant injustice to Miss X.
45. Miss X complained about having to ask the Council to place bids on her behalf because the system could not recognise she needed three bedrooms. It is not fault that the Council must manually override its system to allow pregnant applicants to bid for the correct bedroom size. Understandably, Miss X found this frustrating but she was able to bid and so there is no injustice to her.
46. However, the Council wrongly told Miss X in July that it had resolved the issue and she would now be able to bid. If the Council could not resolve the issue, and so Miss X needed always to ask the Council to bid for her, it should have told her so. If it could resolve the issue, which it suggested it could, it should have done so. In either case, this was fault. This caused Miss X avoidable distress and frustration, which is an injustice.

Back to top

Agreed action

47. To remedy the injustice to Miss X from the faults I have identified, the Council has agreed to:
• Apologise to Miss X in line with our guidance on Making an effective apology
• Pay Miss X £750 in recognition of her avoidable distress, frustration, and missed opportunity.
48. The Council should take this action within four weeks of my final decision.
49. The Council should also take the following action to improve its services:
• Share a copy of this decision with staff in the relevant departments to consider and identify learning from this complaint.
• Ensure staff responsible for processing applications to the housing register know how to identify if an applicant might be homeless or threatened with homelessness promptly and what to do in such cases.
• Remind relevant staff that where an application to the housing register discloses domestic abuse, the Council should act promptly to ensure the applicant is safe and take any further action necessary.
• Ensure any automated correspondence sent to applicants to the housing register confirms their application has been submitted and/or notifies that the application is incomplete and the timescale in which to complete it.
50. The Council should tell the Ombudsman about the action it has taken within eight weeks of my final decision.

Back to top

Final decision

51. I have completed my investigation. There was fault by the Council. The action I have recommended is a suitable remedy for the injustice caused.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman