By Angus Nurse
Most housing professionals are aware that the Local Government Ombudsman investigates complaints against local authorities, including complaints about housing matters. Few officers, however, have probably been involved in an Ombudsman's investigation. This article explains a little bit more about what the Ombudsman does and the types of housing complaint that can be investigated.
The Local Government Ombudsman investigates complaints of injustice arising from maladministration by local authorities and certain other bodies. Their powers are contained in Part III of the Local Government Act 1974.
There are three Local Government Ombudsmen in England and they each deal with complaints from different parts of the country. They investigate complaints about most council matters including:
The Ombudsmen can investigate complaints about how a council has done something, but they cannot question what a council has done simply because someone does not agree with it.
The Ombudsmen investigate the administrative functions of local authorities, which means that a wide range of housing functions fall within their remit. Complaints about housing transfers, neighbour nuisance, council housing repairs, housing grants, homelessness, housing benefit and rent accounts are all within the Ombudsmens' jurisdiction.
In the year 2003/2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Ombudsmen investigated a total of 6,802 complaints about housing, thirty five percent of the total complaints determined in that year. Thirty two of these resulted in formal reports by the Ombudsmen.
Before the Ombudsman can investigate, the complaint must be brought to the attention of the Council so that it has a reasonable opportunity to investigate and reply. What happens during an investigation will depend upon the circumstances of the complaint. Some investigations can be carried out purely by examining the documents of a case and then asking the Council to justify what it has done, but in others a full investigation may be required.
The investigator's first task is to understand what the complaint is about and to decide whether it is by law something the Ombudsman can investigate. The investigator will then write to the Council, so that it has an opportunity to respond to what the complainant has said and to supply any relevant information. At this stage a Council may wish to review the documents of the complaint and reconsider any claims made by the complainant. The Ombudsman always welcomes it if a Council is able to settle a complaint, and receipt of the investigator's initial enquiries on a complaint is a good opportunity to do so.The investigative process is about gathering and analysing information. The investigator is seeking to establish the facts of a complaint and to determine what has happened. The Council's officers and the complainant may have differing views or recollections of events and so it is not always easy to determine exactly what has happened from the documents. Sometimes it's necessary to investigate further.
Field investigations involve an investigator, acting for the Ombudsman, going through the Council's records and interviewing officers and Councillors who were involved or who can explain the Council's policies and procedures. Interviews may be conducted face-to-face or by telephone and are a means of seeking evidence to establish what the Council has done or failed to do. Interviews are formal and on the record, and anything that a Councillor or officer says may be noted by the investigator and will be taken into account before a decision is reached. Withholding information or providing false or misleading information can result in legal proceedings. Interviews are conducted in private although interviewees can have a friend present to support them or protect their interests. The friend cannot, however, give evidence.
While this may all sound a bit daunting, the investigator is seeking to establish the facts of what has happened and is not there to persecute any individual. The investigator will ask questions, but the interviewee is given an opportunity to comment or ask questions too. The investigator will make a note of what is said. If a report is prepared and anything that the interviewee has said is referred to in that, the interviewee is given an opportunity to check the accuracy of any comments attributed to them. Once the investigator has obtained all the relevant information on the law, the Council's policies and procedures and the decision making process involved in the complaint, an impartial view of the facts can then be reached.
At any point during an investigation the Ombudsman may decide that he need not pursue it (e.g. if it becomes clear that there has been no maladministration or if the Council settles the complaint). If so, both the Council and the complainant are informed of this. Investigations can be discontinued by letter to both the Council and the complainant. Because authorities are willing to settle complaints in so many cases, it is only a very small minority of cases that are the subject of a published report. These are public documents, but real names are not used.
Two casework examples illustrate the types of housing issue that the Ombudsmen deal with.
Council Housing Repairs
A housing repair case (01/B/15974) highlighted inadequacies in a Council's monitoring system when a tenant complained of delays in repairing the central heating and water heating systems in her home.
Ms Johnson (not her real name for legal reasons) moved into a council flat. She said that neither the central heating nor the hot water worked from the time she moved into the flat until over a year later, when the systems were properly repaired following her complaint to the Ombudsman. As a result, Ms Johnson and her five-year-old daughter endured two winters in a cold flat.
Before Ms Johnson moved into the flat, the Council's contractor fitted a new boiler. But shortly afterwards, Ms Johnson complained to the Council that the central heating did not work and there was no hot water. The contractor replaced some of the parts in the boiler system. The system then worked, but after several hours it broke down again. Similar incidents then occurred a number of times.
Ms Johnson continued to report the problems to her local housing officer and to the contractor in person, by telephone and in writing.
The Ombudsman said that the Council should have had monitoring systems in place to check that the new boiler was fully functioning before the flat was let. It should also have had monitoring or follow-up systems in place to ensure that the repairs it undertook subsequently had been effective.
If an effective monitoring system had been in place, the Council would have been aware that each time its contractors called, they were unable to rectify the problems. This would have removed the need for Ms Johnson to continue to report the problems. Instead the system would prompt the Council to take further action, and would have ensured a more co-ordinated and coherent approach to addressing the problems.
To resolve the complaint the Council:
Neighbour Nuisance
Mr Butler (not his real name for legal reasons) was a tenant of the Council. There were six flats in the block. Mr Butler complained to the Council about the nuisance caused by one of the tenants, Mr Long, and Mr Long's visitors. The complaints were about noise, drug taking, and damage to the communal entrance door. The other four tenants in the block also complained about nuisance from Mr Long.
Mr Long had an introductory tenancy. Mr Butler complained that the Council should have taken action during the trial period of the introductory tenancy. He said that when the Council failed to do so, it should nonetheless have taken action after the trial period.
The Council did eventually evict Mr Long, but that was a year later than it could have achieved if it had terminated the introductory tenancy.
The Council did not record the date of receipt of diary sheets submitted by the tenants. But the nature of the records convinced the Ombudsman that sheets were submitted in time for action to be taken on the introductory tenancy.
The Ombudsman said it was maladministration not to start action during the introductory tenancy trial period. After that, housing officers did decide to refer the case to the neighbour nuisance team, but failed to do so. That was further maladministration which led to more delays in the resolution of the problem.
The Ombudsman was particularly concerned to note that this was the second critical report she had issued about the Council's failure to take timely action to evict nuisance tenants during the life of an introductory tenancy.
The Ombudsman recommended the Council to pay Mr Butler £550. As Mr Long's other neighbours had also suffered considerably because of its actions, the Ombudsman expressed the hope that the Council would also take appropriate action to compensate them.
The Ombudsman noted that the Council had introduced some administrative improvements, in particular to record when documents were received. The Ombudsman advised the Council to review its working practices and procedures to ensure that future breaches of conditions of introductory tenancies were acted on promptly.
The Local Government Ombudsmen are impartial and independent. When they receive a complaint they are on the side of neither the complainant nor the council. They are there to defend authorities against unjustified allegations, as well as to seek remedies for those who have been wronged. The investigative process helps them to achieve that, and the cases that they deal with can sometimes highlight inadequacies in a council's administrative processes.
Further information on cases dealt with by the Ombudsman can be found at www.lgo.org.uk.
Complaints against housing associations are dealt with by the Independent Housing Ombudsman – www.ihos.org.uk.
.Angus Nurse is an Investigator in the Local Government Ombudsman's Coventry Office.