Ombudsman criticises council for implementing unwritten policy to exclude tenants of housing association from joining housing register
A resident of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead was incorrectly prevented from being eligible to join the housing register for more than four years, after the council applied an undocumented policy to exclude tenants of a housing association.
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Windsor & Maidenhead has agreed to pay the resident redress for avoidable distress and change the complainant’s ‘effective date’.
A report by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman said the resident (Ms D) initially applied online to join the council’s housing register.
She was asked if she was a tenant of her housing association, with her response triggering the system to automatically notify her she was not eligible to join the housing register.
She applied again in March 2022 and the same thing happened when stated she was a tenant of the unnamed housing association.
Windsor & Maidenhead told the Ombudsman that on 14 August 2023 it decided to change its unwritten policy and allow tenants of the housing association to join the housing register.
The next day Ms D contacted the council asking if she could apply.
She was told she remained ineligible but was eventually informed that she had been unable to join the housing register because of her status as a tenant of the housing association and because she had never provided all the documentation required with her applications. This meant the council could not backdate her application.
The complainant was told she could now apply and “if you are unable to proceed with the application you may need to say you are not an X tenant”.
Ms D successfully applied to join the housing register in March 2024, receiving Band B status.
The resident then filed a complaint in August, saying she should have been allowed to join the housing register sooner and her ‘effective date’ should be backdated. She told the council she had been informed her previous applications were invalid because she had not supplied documentation, but this was because she was unable to proceed to the documentation stage once she stated she was an X tenant.
Windsor & Maidenhead responded to the complaint on 8 October, reiterating that Ms D had failed to provide documentation for the 2020 application. She had been in housing need at that time but did not qualify because she was an X tenant. It had now backdated the ‘effective date’ to 14 August 2023 when its policy changed.
The same day Ms D asked the council to escalate her complaint because it had failed to deal with her concerns. It had not explained why Ms D was told to state she was not an X tenant on the application form. She asked, “why should I write the wrong information on an application just to proceed”.
The council refused the request and said her complaint had been dealt with.
The Ombudsman found that the council’s unwritten policy of not allowing tenants of the housing association in question to join the housing register had been in place from at least 2020.
This interpretation of the authority’s allocations policy had been “decided by the Head of Housing and the Housing Strategy and Inclusions Manager”, according to Windsor & Maidenhead. The policy changed following the departure of the Head of Housing.
In its report the Ombudsman found that Windsor & Maidenhead had “no right to create an additional policy that created a blanket exclusion on [X housing association] tenants”.
It also revealed that the council had accepted “the policy was not correct, there was no justification for this under the Allocations Policy”.
This serious failing meant that the resident was denied the right to join the housing register since she first applied in 2020 despite having housing need, the Ombudsman concluded.
Ms D told the Ombudsman that, “understandably”, she was “confused and concerned about being told to submit false information”.
The report also suggested that the council had provided no evidence that it sought to remove the question from the online application in August 2023 when the policy changed.
“The council says it is now working to remove the question, but this should have been started over 20 months ago. It also means that whilst the question remains on the application form X tenants who correctly answer the question about their landlord may have their applications automatically rejected,” the Ombudsman said.
The report said Windsor & Maidenhead’s complaint response was poor, having failed to acknowledge that residents could not provide documentation for applications because of its own errors.
The council had an opportunity to acknowledge the faults and failed to do so. It should have allowed the complaint to be escalated because it had not explained and dealt with all the points made in the complaint, the report said.
The Ombudsman decided, however, that while the resident had been negatively affected by the loss of an ‘effective date’ in 2020, rather than 2023, she had not lost out on any suitable properties during the period as these all went to applicants with an earlier effective date or with additional needs and priority (such as an adapted property).
Windsor & Maidenhead has therefore agreed to pay the resident £500 for avoidable distress and confirmed that her new ‘effective date’ is 6 July 2020.
To make service improvements the council has also confirmed it is working on amendments to its online form.
A spokesperson for the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead said: “We fully accept the Ombudsman’s decision in this case and are in the process of completing the actions required, including a payment of £500 for distress caused. There was no suggested remedy for loss of opportunity, as the few properties that were offered during this period went to applicants who had been on the housing waiting list longer or, had a higher priority need.”
The council has approved a new allocations policy which is to be implemented in Summer 2025.
Harry Rodd
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