Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation. We cannot investigate complaints about housing disrepair by social housing tenants.

The complaint

1. Ms X complained about the Council’s failure to give her housing application sufficient priority over the past seven years. She says her council home is in disrepair and she suffers from poor ventilation and rodent infestation in the loft. She wants the Council to give her case higher priority because of her medical conditions.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We cannot investigate complaints about the provision or management of social housing by a council acting as a registered social housing provider. (Local Government Act 1974, paragraph 5A schedule 5, as amended)
3. 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 how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. 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)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council’s responses. I have also considered the Council’s housing allocations scheme.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. Ms X says her social rented home suffers from disrepair and she has had different repairs carried out over the past 7 years to remedy poor ventilation in her home. She says she recently had a mouse infestation in the loft. She is overcrowded and is currently in Band C for a transfer to a larger property.
8. The Council says it has remedied the repairs which she reported including a missing roof tile. It has responded to her reports of mice in her loft but says she declined access on more than one occasion before the appropriate pest control could be applied.
9. We cannot investigate complaints about repair matters by social housing landlords. Since 2013, the Housing Ombudsman service has been responsible for investigating these complaints.
10. Miss X says she has had four housing medical assessments of her application and each outcome has been negative. The Council’s allocations policy requires medical needs to be related to the design and layout of an applicant’s home which is having an effect on their medical conditions. The Council said in its medical assessments that Ms X does not meet the threshold for medical priority.
11. 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.
12. I have seen no evidence of fault which would suggest that Ms X should be placed in a higher banding. The Ombudsman may not find fault with a council’s assessment of a housing application/ a housing applicant’s priority if it has carried this out in line with its published allocations scheme. We recognise that the demand for social housing far outstrips the supply of properties in many areas.
13. We will not consider the earlier medical assessments which were made outside the 12-month period in which we can receive complaints. It was reasonable for Ms X to complain about these at the time if she believed they were flawed.

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Final decision

14. We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of a housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation. We cannot investigate complaints about housing disrepair by social housing tenants.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman