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Local Government
Ombudsman Watch
www.ombudsmanwatch.org
- Local Government Ombudsman Watch -
Exposing the Ombudsman's pro-council bias and
whitewashing of maladministration.
Remind you of anyone?
(Copyright Frank Fitzgerald, reproduced
with kind permission.)
The events that inspired
the founding of  LGOWatch
Local Government Ombudsman Watch believes that citizens have a right to an Independent Local
Government Complaints Commission that does not recruit its senior staff from local authorities, as does the
current council Ombudsman. A local authority Ombudsman system should also be expected to investigate
complaints fairly and impartially, and report that a council is at fault when maladministration is established,
rather than disguising the maladministration as a 'local settlement' in its publications. It must become
possible to complain about maladministration when it is committed by a council Ombudsman to an
independent tribunal; at present, the citizen is restricted to either complaining to the local authority
Ombudsman that the Ombudsman's findings are unjust, or else applying to take the decision to judicial
review, which can be a very expensive procedure and is only open to those who are so poor they can get
legal aid, or so wealthy that they can afford to lose potentially tens of thousands of pounds. The prospects of
success at judicial review are also very poor: in the financial years 2001-2004, Nick Raynsford MP reports
judges to have found in favour of the council Ombudsman in all 25 cases taken to judicial review. Even when
an appeal is successful, the judge only has the power to ask the Local Government Ombudsman to take
another look at the case. This does not seem like a fair appeal system against a local authority Ombudsman
service. A credible local authority Ombudsman service needs to conduct itself with a degree of honesty,
integrity and impartiality that makes it beyond reproach, and be made politically and democratically
responsible to the taxpayers who fund it. The present arrangement merely encourages local councils to
commit maladministration with impunity, because local authorities know that it is the case that the Local
Government Ombudsman is usually very much on their side.
HOUNSLOW HOUSING HORROR

By Gary Powell

In 1999 I encountered a particularly unpleasant experience of injustice and local
authority callousness when I tried to help a young family avoid eviction by Hounslow
Council for incorrectly alleged non-payment of rent. The family consisted of the
mother, Ms Taylor*,  who was receiving treatment for stress and depression; her
partner, Mr Stone*, who had a serious heart defect; and three young children of
both sexes. They were living in a two-bedroom council flat. The daughter was old
enough to need her own bedroom, and her brothers shared the other one. This left
the parents with the chore of struggling to drag a double mattress into the living
room every evening as a makeshift bedroom, and of course reversing the procedure
the following morning. There was a further teenage child living with his
grandparents in another borough because of the overcrowded conditions in this flat.
Newsroom South East in fact ran a report on this family’s overcrowded living
conditions.

As if this predicament were not bad enough, on account of poor communication
between the DSS and the Council Housing Department, the Housing Department was
not sent a confirmation of the family’s entitlement to supplementary benefit
(Proofs), and so they expected the family to pay full rent. Arrears accrued, and a
Notice of Intention to Seek Possession was issued. Although Ms Taylor explained
that the family were in receipt of benefits, the Council accused her of failing to
submit a Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit form, of which she eventually
submitted four in total: to no avail, as the Housing Department denied any of them
having been received. Ms Taylor was accused of lying. The Council refused to
remove the Notice. Ms Taylor, already receiving treatment for stress and
depression, was at the end of her rope, as was her partner.

I was asked to help this family specifically with the eviction threat, though the
circumstances they were experiencing as a result of Hounslow Council’s appalling
maladministration required more extensive involvement than I had anticipated. Ms
Taylor had repeatedly submitted Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit forms as
instructed, which the Council repeatedly asserted they had not received, and I could
see no way of removing this threat. In the end, I wrote to the DSS, and it was
discovered  they had failed to send the Council the Proofs. Although the DSS shared
in the blame to a degree, the Council’s issuing a Notice of Intention to Seek
Possession, rather than investigating whether the problem was beyond Ms Taylor’s
control, identifying the absence of Proofs and giving the DSS a quick phone call to
resolve the matter, amounted to clear-cut maladministration with injustice, especially
in view of the anxiety the situation caused to this couple, who suffered stress-filled
months between service and revocation of this Notice.

With regard to the overcrowding issue, a member of the Council’s Housing
Department visited the family, and identified that the family needed to be re-housed
urgently because of their overcrowding. A calculation of the number of housing
points they had fell short of the number required to join the waiting list for a four-
bedroom property, which the officer believed they needed. However, they both had
medical conditions that were exacerbated by their poor housing: Ms Taylor with her
stress-related depression, and Mr Stone with his congenital heart condition, (he was
one of the first babies in the country to be given a pig’s heart valve transplant by
Professor Magdi Jacoub, and the valve was leaking and causing exhaustion). They
were instructed to send self-certified details of their conditions to the Council Medical
Officer on the appropriate form. This in itself was a very dubious procedure, as
without medical confirmation of the conditions, anyone could obviously invent
anything on these forms. Mr Stone’s GP gave him a letter confirming the deleterious
effect the poor housing was having on his medical condition, and inviting the
assessor to contact him for further information if needed. This form was sent to the
Council Medical Officer. Ms Taylor’s GP felt she could not give a similar open letter for
forwarding on account of the risk of breach of confidentiality, but said she was
happy to send the information directly to the Council’s physician if it was requested. I
spoke to Ms Taylor’s GP myself, and could perfectly understand her concerns. These
medical letters have to be paid for, incidentally, and are obviously a burden on a
family with a very low income. Ms Taylor sent the self-certified medical form to the
council together with an invitation to contact her GP.

The news came back form the Council that both Ms Taylor and Mr Stone were being
awarded zero medical points for housing transfer. No reason was given. The Council
Medical Officer also apparently had a policy of not contacting GPs for further
information. The award of zero points in these demonstrably worthy and valid cases
was itself a case of maladministration, let alone the breach of medical confidentiality
and the vulnerability of this unmonitored procedure to abuse by dishonest applicants.
The fact that no reason was giving for the award of zero points in either case also
represented maladministration according to the Ombudsman’s published guidelines,
as it removed the possibility of appeal or clarification. The award of zero medical
points under these circumstances was also in breach of the Council’s own guidelines
for the awarding of medical housing transfer points, itself a blatant example of
maladministration as defined by the LGO.

The family therefore did not have enough points to join the waiting list for the four-
bedroom property the Council regarded them as needing. However, although they
had adequate points to join the waiting list for a three-bedroom property, which
would have been a significant improvement to their current conditions, the Council in
a letter expressed the possibility that it might refuse to allow them to transfer into a
three-bedroom property because it was too small for their assessed housing needs!
The net effect of this, of course, was that they could end up stuck in the two-
bedroom property. It was at this point I realised, to my horror, that I was dealing
with the Council from Hell.

On the Local Government Ombudsman’s website, in its guidance on good practice
section, I discovered an interesting concept: ‘the fettering of discretion’. Apparently,
it amounts to maladministration if a local authority sticks rigidly to a policy if other
circumstances strongly indicate that some flexibility would be appropriate. If
Hounslow Council has (had?) some insane policy that entailed imprisoning a family in
an overcrowded two-bedroom flat rather then letting them join the waiting list for a
three-bedroom property because the Council considered on the one hand that they
needed a four-bedroom property and on the other that they did not even have
enough housing points to join a waiting list for such a property, then this family’s
circumstances would at the very least have required an unfettering of discretion.

The correspondence between myself and Hounslow Council during this period was
voluminous. I copied all of it to the Local Government Ombudsman, together with Ms
Taylor’s complaint. I also wrote a detailed account of events in an accompanying
letter to the Ombudsman, and there was further exchange of correspondence
between myself and the Investigator. Everything was set out very clearly. Following
his ‘investigation’, the Investigator wrote to me on behalf of the LGO and stated
that, in his view, the Council had not done anything that would amount to
maladministration with injustice. I was incredulous.

I assumed the Investigator was simply not competent, and wrote a substantive
letter of complaint to the Assistant Director, highlighting the correspondence
between the LGO’s definitions of maladministration, and the Council’s action. He was
in general very defensive of the Investigator’s findings, but conceded that he would
ask the Council to pay Ms Taylor £150 in compensation for the stress caused by the
way her housing benefit application was dealt with.

I then wrote a further substantive, detailed  and closely-argued letter of complaint
to the Assistant Director, and in response I had yet another concession: an award of
£200 to Ms Taylor for the stress and uncertainly caused by the discrepancy between
the Council’s stated and practised policy for the awarding of housing transfer
medical points. He refused to make any award at all in respect of the time and
trouble caused by the process of making the complaints, notwithstanding the
hundreds of pages of correspondence and hours of labour to supply facts and
arguments that were simply ignored, first by the Council, and then by the LGO. (In
fact, this is a common experience of LGOwatch members: the LGO simply ignoring
clear facts and arguments that would impede his finding in favour of the Council.)

I had to wring these two concessions out of the Assistant Commissioner by being
extremely tenacious. The evidence was watertight, and these cases of
maladministration were so obvious they would have been recognised immediately by
any fair and impartial investigation, and should not have required the further letters
to the Assistant Director. My thought was one of dismay regarding the hope of
people who experience similar appalling treatment from a council and are in no
position to provide such a detailed and thoroughly argued case with unassailable
evidence. I did not provide any new evidence to the Assistant Director: just
arguments based on the LGO’s own guidelines to determine maladministration. I am
quite sure many people simply give up, and the experience had a pungent odour of
blatant pro-council bias.

The experience of blatant injustice from Hounslow Council being further
compounded by blatant injustice and bias from the Local Government Ombudsman,
and of the desperate and frustrating efforts to protect this family from
homelessness against institutional vested interests and callousness, took its toll, and
I could not face opening the files again until 2003, when I set up the first LGO
website. Since then, I have received many e-mails from people who have had similar
or even worse experiences.

* Names amended to protect confidentiality.

P.S. There was a good outcome to the family's difficulties, with no thanks at all to
the Local Government Ombudsman: Another borough offered rehousing in suitable
accommodation.