The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint about housing information provided to her by the Council in 2024 and earlier and its recent decision that she is adequately housed. Part of the complaint in late. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the Council’s more recent actions.
The complaint
Ms X complains the Council provided her with incorrect information and advice about its housing allocations policy in 2022 and 2024. She says this has led to the Council’s more recent decision that she is adequately housed and a downgrading of her priority band. She says this decision is incorrect as her household is currently lacking one bedroom. She wants the Council to accept it provided her with incorrect information and increase her bedroom eligibility and priority banding to allow her to bid on 4- bedroom properties.
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 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.
(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
Ms X says the Council first provided her with incorrect information about bedroom eligibility in 2022 and again in 2024. We will not investigate this as this part of the complaint is late. If Ms X was unhappy with advice provided by the Council or any Council decisions made in 2022 and 2024 regarding her housing application, bedroom eligibility or priority banding, I can see no good reason why she could not have approached us sooner.
The Council reassessed her housing application in 2025. As part of its review, the Council viewed publicly available information about her current home which showed it had three bedrooms. It said the bedroom reduction forms that Ms X had previously submitted stated her household could be accommodated in a three-bedroom property. For this reason, it considered her to be adequately housed. In line with its policy, it reduced her housing priority from Silver band to Bronze band.
We will not investigate this. The Council’s decision appears in line with its published allocations policy. There is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.
Final decision
We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because part of the complaint is late and there is insufficient evidence of fault to warrant an investigation.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman