The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate the Council’s complaints handling. This is because Ms X took the Council to court, so we have no remit to investigate any connected matters.
The complaint
In short, Ms X complains the Council has failed to comply with legal duties concerning tenancy matters, governance, complaint handling and the Council’s response to previous Ombudsman findings (both the LGSCO and the Housing Ombudsman).
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
The courts have said that where someone has sought a remedy by way of proceedings in any court of law, we cannot investigate. This is the case even if the appeal did not or could not provide a complete remedy for all the injustice claimed. (R v The Commissioner for Local Administration ex parte PH (1999) EHCA Civ 916) We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8)) We cannot investigate complaints about the provision or management of social housing by a council acting as a registered social housing provider. (Local Government Act 1974, paragraph 5A schedule 5, as amended)
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
The Council has responded to Ms X’s complaints. It said its stage one complaints response addressed the main crux of her complaint concerning her tenancy. It accepted its complaints response could have been more detailed and apologised for this. It rejected Ms X’s broader concerns over governance and leadership concerns and said Ombudsman recommendations were taken seriously. It also said learning from complaints was shared with staff.
We will not investigate this complaint. Ms X has taken the Council to court via judicial review proceedings. Her judicial view claim is in connection with her concerns that the Council is allegedly not complying with its legal duties, its responses following previous Ombudsman findings and the adequacy of its actions to resolve her underlying complaints.
I have considered if there are any separable matters we can consider that are not linked to the court action such as the complaints process. I do not see any stand-alone issues that are not linked to matters within her judicial review application that we could reasonably separate out and investigate on their own.
Another reason for not investigating is that some of Ms X’s concerns relate to its handling of matters within a different Ombudsman’s jurisdiction (the Housing Ombudsman). We have no remit over tenancy matters.
Final decision
We will not investigate Ms X’s complaint because she has taken legal action against the Council and we have no remit to investigate any linked matters such as the complaint handling.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman