Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Miss X’s housing application. The complaint about the Council’s decision in 2018 is late without good reason to investigate it now. Nor could we reach a clear enough view on this point now. There is no fault in the waiting time priority the Council is giving the application now. It would be disproportionate to investigate the Council’s complaint-handling in isolation. There is no fault in the Council expecting Miss X to bid for properties rather than directly offering her a property.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains about the Council’s handling of her application for social housing. She says the Council’s alleged faults have deprived her of an offer of social housing, so she and her family remain living in crowded circumstances that are particularly difficult because of the medical conditions of family members.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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)
3. 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 any fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome, or there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant, copy correspondence from the Council and the Council’s social housing allocations policy.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. In 2018 Miss X gave the Council information about her family’s medical circumstances. The Council put her housing application in what Miss X describes as the ‘basic’ priority band on the housing register, from where she bid unsuccessfully for properties.
7. In 2024, Miss X contacted the Council again about her circumstances as her children had grown and she considered her living circumstances more difficult and dangerous due to medical conditions. The Council did a new assessment, decided the family had a significant medical need to move and gave her application more priority. Miss X believes the Council was wrong not to do that in 2018. She argues if she had had more priority since 2018 her family might have been rehoused by now.
8. Miss X knew in 2018 what priority her application had received. So the restriction in paragraph 2 applies to this part of the complaint. If Miss X believed her application had too little priority, she could reasonably have complained to us within 12 months of then. This part of the complaint is late. I do not see good enough reason to accept it now.
9. Even if there was good reason for Miss X not complaining to us sooner about this point, I doubt we could reach a clear enough view now about the Council’s decision-making so long ago. Also, the Council’s housing allocations policy and the way it prioritises applications have changed since then, as have Miss X’s circumstances. So we cannot just extrapolate that Miss X should have had more priority sooner.
10. The Council only had to reassess the application when Miss X went back to it for this, which she did not do until March 2024. The Council reassessed in May 2024. Given how long most applicants wait for social housing in Hackney, the time taken on the recent reassessment is unlikely to have caused injustice to Miss X beyond some frustration, which is not significant enough for us to investigate.
11. Miss X’s application now has Band B priority on the Council’s new system. Within Band B, applicants are prioritised by their “effective date” in Band B. Miss X’s date is March 2024, when she contacted the Council for the new assessment. Miss X is unhappy her application no longer has the previous waiting time priority from 2018 to 2024. The Council’s policy is that when an application moves to a higher band, the effective date changes to the date of the applicant’s contact that led to the change of band, not the date they joined the housing register. The Council acted in line with its policy. It was not at fault here.
12. Miss X wants the Council to give her a direct offer of a property. Any investigation is unlikely to find fault with the Council instead prioritising the application in line with its policy and expecting Miss X to bid for properties as the policy sets out.
13. Miss X is also dissatisfied with how long the Council took to respond to her formal complaint about the matter. It is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint procedures, if we are unable to deal with the substantive issue. I realise Miss X is concerned about how long it may take to bid successfully. However, that is because demand for social housing significantly outstrips supply, not because of fault by the Council.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint. The complaint about the Council’s decision in 2018 is late without good enough reason to investigate it now. Nor could we reach a clear enough view on this point now. The time taken to reassess the application in 2024 did not cause significant enough injustice to warrant us investigating. There is no fault in the waiting time priority the Council is giving the application now. It would be disproportionate to investigate the Council’s complaint-handling in isolation. There is no fault in the Council expecting Miss X to bid for properties rather than directly offering her a property.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman