Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about Mr X’s application for social housing. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council refusing Mr X’s application. Any different treatment of another person did not directly disadvantage Mr X significantly enough to warrant investigation. Mr X can reasonably take court action if he believes the Council should compensate him.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains the Council acted wrongly and inconsistently by refusing his social housing application but giving social housing to another person. He says the Council discriminated against him racially and breached his human rights. Mr X states this means he and his child cannot be considered for the larger housing they need, which has caused distress.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. It is our decision whether to start, and when to end an investigation into something the law allows us to investigate. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 24A(6) and 34B(8), 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 direct injustice to the person who complained, or any direct injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
4. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone could take the matter to court. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to go to court. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(c), as amended)
5. We cannot decide if an organisation has breached the Equality Act or the Human Rights Act as this can only be done by the courts. But we can make decisions about whether or not an organisation has properly taken account of an individual’s rights in its treatment of them, if we decide there are grounds to investigate the complaint.

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council’s social housing allocations policy. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. Mr X’s home has one bedroom. Mr X has joint residence of his child, so seeks a two-bedroomed home. The Council refused Mr X’s social housing application, saying Mr X’s home was not overcrowded enough for him to join the housing register. That decision was in line with the Council’s allocations policy, which says someone can only join the housing register if they are short of two bedrooms or two rooms that could be used for sleeping (such as living or dining rooms). Mr X lacks at most one room. The Council is entitled to have that policy, and its decision was in line with the policy. So there is not enough evidence of fault in that decision to warrant us investigating.
8. Mr X alleges inconsistency, saying the Council gave a two-bedroomed property to a single adult he knows who does not have care of any children or a disability that would merit an extra bedroom. We do not have details of the other case, so do not know the other person’s circumstances, whether they got their property at a different time under a different policy or whether the Council departed from its policy in that case. However, we do not need that information to decide Mr X’s complaint to us. The key point is the lack of evidence of fault in the decision-making on Mr X’s application. Even if the Council treated someone else differently and even if that amounted to fault (neither of which we have established), it is unlikely we could find that directly deprived Mr X of a larger home, as the Council’s policy does not entitled Mr X to that. So any inconsistency did not disadvantage Mr X directly and significantly enough to warrant investigation. It is not the Ombudsman’s role to police or oversee the Council’s activities generally.
9. Mr X claims the alleged different treatment was due to racial discrimination. As the decision in Mr X’s case was in line with the Council’s policy, there is no obvious evidence of the Council failing to take account of Mr X’s Equality Act rights or human rights. Beyond that, it is for the courts, not the Ombudsman, to decide if the Council breached the Equality Act or the Human Rights Act.
10. Mr X says he wants the same treatment as the other person, namely the Council to give him a two-bedroomed property. Any investigation by us would be unlikely to achieve this as the Council’s policy does not entitle Mr X to a two-bedroomed property.
11. Mr X also wants a ‘considerable amount of compensation.’ Compensation is a matter for the courts. There might be a potential cost to court action, but that is not in itself automatically a reason to consider court action unreasonable. Mr X could get help with court costs if he eligible and could ask for his costs if court action succeeds. It is reasonable to expect Mr X to take court action if he believes anything happened for which he deserves compensation.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint. There is not enough evidence of fault in the Council refusing Mr X’s application. This means there is no obvious evidence of the Council failing to have regard to Mr X’s legal rights. It is for the courts to decide if the Council breached the law. Any different treatment of another person did not directly disadvantage Mr X significantly enough to warrant investigation. Mr X can reasonably take court action if he believes the Council should compensate him.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman