The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of Mrs X’s housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.
The complaint
Mrs X complained about the Council not making her an offer of permanent accommodation since she was accepted under the main homeless duty in October 2000. She says she has been in temporary accommodation which is leased from a housing association by the Council and should be entitled to an offer of social housing by this time.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
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 we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation, or further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.
(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A (6), as amended, section 34(B))
How I considered this complaint
I considered the information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mrs X says she has been housed in temporary accommodation for 24 years and that she should l have been made an offer of permanent accommodation by now. The Council says she is occupying suitable temporary accommodation leased from a housing association landlord and that because 4-bedroom vacancies are few her priority on the housing list has been insufficient for her to receive offers.
Mrs X was placed in band 4 on the allocation scheme in October 2000 but in November 2023 her banding was changed to band 2 due to medical priority being awarded. This may still mean that it could be some time before any offer is made due to high demand for larger homes. There is no statutory duty for a council to make an offer of permanent accommodation within a specific timescale and this is dependent on the supply of vacancies and the numbers of applicants with high priority needs for them.
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.
In this case there is no evidence that Mrs X’s application has been incorrectly assessed or that her current accommodation was unsuitable for her homeless needs when it was offered in October 2000.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint about the Council’s assessment of Mrs X’s housing application. There is insufficient evidence of fault which would warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman