The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Council stopping providing interim accommodation. There is not significant enough injustice for us to investigate whether the Council was at fault.
The complaint
Mr X complains the Council wrongly ended its duty to give him interim accommodation, which he says left him homeless.
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 any injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement.
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Mr X was homeless. The Council accepted a duty to give him interim accommodation while it worked to try to resolve his homelessness. The Council ended the interim accommodation duty because it said Mr X had deliberately damaged his interim accommodation. Mr X says the Council did not properly consider his arguments and evidence that he had not caused damage.
For the reasons given in paragraph 2, we will only investigate whether the Council reached its decision properly if any fault in the Council’s decision-making is likely to have caused Mr X significant enough injustice to warrant investigation. Here, the Council gave Mr X notice it was going to stop providing interim accommodation. It then suspended the eviction while dealing with Mr X’s formal complaint. The Council told me that, before it actually stopped providing the interim accommodation, Mr X got longer-term accommodation to move to. I have seen a letter the Council sent Mr X saying he had accepted accommodation, so the Council’s homelessness duty had ended. That letter was within the timescale of the notice to end the interim accommodation. Later, the Council’s two responses to Mr X’s formal complaint also said Mr X had other accommodation before the Council would have made him leave the interim accommodation.
I am satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr X had other accommodation before the Council stopped providing the interim accommodation. Therefore, the Council’s ending the interim accommodation duty did not leave Mr X with nowhere to stay. I recognise Mr X would have found the Council ending the interim accommodation duty stressful and would have been dissatisfied as he did not consider it justified. However, in the context of what happened, that is not a significant enough injustice to warrant the Ombudsman devoting time and public money to investigating whether the Council was at fault.
Mr X says he is homeless. If he is now homeless, that is unlikely to have resulted directly from the Council’s ending its interim accommodation duty, for the reasons given above. If Mr X has become homeless from the longer-term accommodation, or is threatened with homelessness from that accommodation, that would appear to be a new matter he can approach the Council about.
Final decision
We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not significant enough injustice for us to investigate whether the Council was at fault.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman