The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the Conucil’s assessment of a housing application. We will not exercise discretion to consider the application from 2020 to 2023 because these events took place outside the normal 12-month period for investigating complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Miss X could not have complained to us sooner. We will not investigate the complaint about failure to offer her suitable vacancies which she believes she was shortlisted for. There is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.
The complaint
Miss X complained about the Council’s failure to award her Gold Band priority from 2023 when she applied for housing in 2020. She says she believes she has been overlooked for vacancies which she should have been offered or was not offered vacancies which she was bidding on.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
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 provider has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended) 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 information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Miss X says she was awarded Gold priority banding for her housing application in 2023. She says she applied for housing in 2020 and that she has been overcrowded with medical needs since that time so she should have had the priority backdated.
We will not investigate this complaint because it concerns matters the complainant was aware of more than 12 months before they complained to us. We have some discretion to consider older complaints in some circumstances but this would not apply here. Miss X could have asked for a review of her application priority any time after 2020 or have complained to us. She did not complain until November 2025.
The time for receiving complaints is from when someone became aware of the matter they wished to complain about, not when they complained to the Council or it issued its final response. We would expect someone to complain to us within a year, even if they were dissatisfied with the time the complaints procedure was taking.
Miss X also complained about the Council’s failure to offer her vacancies which she made bids on and was shortlisted for and did not explain why other applicants were successful. The Council says in its response that 3 vacancies mentioned by Miss X were checked for suitability before any offers were made. She has a family of 8 persons and requires a 4-bedroom property. The properties referred to were considered to be too small in terms of room sizes to be suitable to resolve her overcrowding needs.
We would not expect a council to offer properties which did not resolve the current overcrowding situation which gave the applicant their priority in the first place. Another property she mentioned, was never a vacancy and is a bungalow, according to the Council not a 4-bedroomed house.
Miss X said in her complaint to us that she was overlooked for a vacancy which was contested by 5 other applicants with higher banding or longer time on the same banding than her. This is not fault. If someone with lower priority was offered a property Miss X was bidding on she would believe she had been disadvantaged and the allocation list should be based on those with the highest priority through banding status or time according to the policy.
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.
The Ombudsman may not find fault with a council’s assessment of a housing application or 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.
The Council accepted that it had delayed processing the compalint through its complaints procedure and offered Miss X £50 in recognition of this. This is a reasonable remedy because the outcome did not affect her housing application status.
Final decision
We will not investigate this complaint about the Conucil’s assessment of a housing application. We will not exercise discretion to consider the application from 2020 to 2023 because these events took place outside the normal 12-month period for investigating complaints. There is no evidence to suggest that Miss X could not have complained to us sooner. We will not investigate the complaint about failure to offer her suitable vacancies which she believes she was shortlisted for. There is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman