Summary: Miss X complains the Council wrongly suspended her housing application and then delayed reviewing this error. This meant Miss X could not apply for housing for a year. She says this caused her an injustice because she needed to move for medical reasons. The Council has accepted its delay in dealing with her review was fault. We have suggested a remedy to address the injustice Miss X says she suffered and to address any potential injustice that might have been caused to other service-users by an apparent service failure. The Council has agreed to remedy in the way suggested.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council wrongly suspended her housing application and took a year to reinstate it. Miss X says this prevented her moving sooner and meant she has remained living in her current home, which is unsuited to her medical needs.

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What I have investigated

2. I have investigated matters that completed the Council’s complaints procedure in December 2019. The final section of this statement contains my reasons for not investigating the rest of the complaint.

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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 an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. We may investigate matters coming to our attention during an investigation, if we consider that a member of the public who has not complained may have suffered an injustice as a result. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26D and 34E, as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with a council’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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What I found

6. Miss X was on the Council’s housing register because her current home does not meet her medical needs. Miss X has mobility problems making it difficult to manage stairs, use the bathroom in her current home and take out her rubbish.
7. The Council’s housing policy is that an applicant who refuses two suitable offers of housing will be removed from the housing register for 12 months and must then reapply. At the time of the events related to this complaint, Miss X had already refused one property the Council considered suitable.
8. In October 2018, the Council arranged a viewing for Miss X of a property she had bid for. Miss X reports she telephoned the Council to say she was running late. She states the Council officer she spoke to said that was fine and would be relayed to the person conducting the viewing. When Miss X arrived at the property, nobody was there. Miss X telephoned the Council several times to discuss this and says she went home after being told the person conducting the viewing had already left and would not return.
9. The Council then told Miss X it had removed her from the housing register, treating her as having failed to attend the viewing therefore refusing a suitable property. Miss X immediately asked the Council to review that decision and provided evidence about her telephone calls to the Council on the day of the visit.
10. The Council should deal with reviews within eight weeks but took 12 months, it says due to a backlog of work. It said the review team had been working in date order.
11. When the Council reviewed the matter in October 2019 it overturned its previous decision and reinstated Miss X to the housing register. Within three months, Miss X bid successfully for two properties. She has not moved into either property, due to events that were the subject of a separate complaint to the Council.
12. Miss X complained to the Council about her removal from the housing register and the delay dealing with her review request. The Council did not uphold the complaint. After Miss X complained to us, the Council changed its position and said it was at fault for delaying completing the review.

My findings

13. The Council was evidently at fault for wrongly treating Miss X as failing to attend the viewing and for the excessive delay reviewing its decision. The Council’s complaint-handling was also inadequate. Nothing material changed between the Council telling Miss X it would not uphold her complaint and the Council telling us it would uphold the complaint. The Council should have been able to resolve this complaint without Miss X having to come to the Ombudsman.
14. I have considered the effects of the Council’s faults. The faults caused Miss X avoidable frustration and uncertainty for 12 months.
15. I have also considered whether Miss X would have moved home if the Council’s faults had not happened. I only have to reach a view on the balance of probabilities. Miss X bid successfully for properties, both before being removed from the housing register and shortly after her reinstatement. On balance it is likely she would have bid successfully during the period she was wrongly suspended. Of course, bidding successfully for a property does not guarantee being able to move. The bidder might refuse a property (either reasonably or unreasonably) or other reasons might prevent a move going ahead. I am mindful Miss X has not accepted properties previously. However, as Miss X was evidently keen to move and is likely to have bid successfully, I am not confident, on balance, she would have refused any offers she would have received or that other factors would have prevented her moving.
16. For these reasons, in all the circumstances, I consider it more likely than not, on balance, that Miss X would have moved home but for the Council’s fault. It seems likely such a move could have happened within the first six months of the 12 months when Miss X could not bid, that is, by the end of April 2019. But Miss X has had to remain in her current accommodation, with the associated difficulties. I have therefore recommended that Miss X should be paid a monthly sum to acknowledge the time she has spent in unsuitable accommodation. I have suggested that this payment is made from May 2019, as I consider it more likely than not that, but for the Council’s fault, Miss X would have been housed by that point.
17. As the Council’s delay apparently resulted from a backlog of work, there also seems a reasonable chance other applicants were disadvantaged by delay reviewing their removal from the housing register, espeically since the Council said it was dealing with reviews in date order. That would be an injustice the Ombudsman could consider, as paragraph 4 explains.

Agreed action

18. Within one month of my final decision, the Council should:
1. Apologise to Miss X for the fault identified in this decision.
2. Make a payment of £300 to Miss X to acknowledge the frustration experienced by Miss X while she waited for the result of her review.
3. Make a payment to Miss X to acknowledge the period she has had to remain in unsuitable accommodation because of Council fault. I recommend a payment of £150 per month from May 2019 to January 2020, when two properties were made available to Miss X. This sum amounts to £1350.
19. Within three months of my final decision, the Council should:
1. Review other cases where it took longer than eight weeks to review and then overturned original decisions. It should offer suitable remedies to those people along the same lines as the remedy for this complaint. It should provide a report to the Ombudsman setting out the work done.
2. The Council should review its complaint-handling so it upholds and remedies such complaints itself.

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Final decision

20. I have found the Council at fault and made recommendations to remedy the injustice caused. I have now completed my investigation.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

21. I have not investigated the Council’s handling of matters related to the two properties Miss X bid for in January 2020. That matter was the subject of a separate complaint sent to the Ombudsman. Miss X has also made other more recent allegations. Any complaint must first complete the Council’s own complaints procedure.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman