Decision report 201002105

Summary
Ms C lived in a three-bedroomed council house with her adult daughter. Ms C told the council that she was getting married and intended to move. She asked if the tenancy could pass to her daughter, Ms A. A council officer visited and gave Ms C a change of tenancy form and housing application for Ms A, which were  completed.  Ms C was told that it was unlikely Ms A would be allowed to take on the tenancy as the house was a family home and she was a single person, but that Ms A could apply for housing on her own behalf. Ms C said she asked for, and received, confirmation that Ms A would, at no point, become homeless.

Almost immediately after this, the council wrote to Ms C refusing the application to transfer the tenancy. They said that they were not required to provide Ms A with
alternative accommodation. They told Ms C to vacate the house within 28 days. Ms C wrote to the council with several questions about this. The deadline by which she was to leave the property was about two weeks later, and she asked for a response before she left. She did not get one, and wrote twice again after leaving. She received a detailed response to her letter about six weeks after moving out. This said that the council now regarded Ms A as 'statutory homeless' and they would make an offer of accommodation as properties became available. Ms A was by then staying with friends, but was offered a property within a couple of months.

We found that it was unreasonable of the council not to respond to Ms C’s letter until after she had vacated her property. The council told us they initially regarded her letter as an appeal against their decision and assumed Ms C would stay in the property until this was resolved. As she then vacated the property they assumed she had accepted the decision. However, we took the view that the initial letter was a request for information rather than an appeal and that in it Ms C pointed out the deadline concerned. We upheld both this complaint and the complaint that the council did not explain the options to Ms C. The council said that they told Ms C that if the transfer application was refused she could either remain in the property or, if she moved, Ms A could present as homeless. We found, however, that the council did not send out their standard termination advice letter nor did they explain that Ms C could have stayed in the house longer to organise, for example, the disposal of belongings. We noted that the council apologised for the delay and waived certain costs at the end of the tenancy.

Given this, we made recommendations only to deal with matters that we considered were still outstanding.

We did not uphold a complaint that the advice provided was misleading. Ms C felt that the council did not make it clear that Ms A could become homeless if her application was not approved. There was conflicting information about the advice given, and we agreed the council should have followed this up by providing information about how to terminate a tenancy. (They did, however, write and explain that they were not required to home Ms A - the implication of this is that, on a change of tenancy, she would become homeless.)

Recommendations

 We recommended that the council:

• issue an apology to Ms C for their shortcomings with regard to providing her with adequate information following the refusal of her request to transfer her tenancy; and
• review their current procedures to ensure that due process is followed when terminating tenancy agreements and ensure firstly, that a distinction is made between a refusal to transfer tenancy and the formal decision that a tenancy is being terminated: and secondly, that sufficient information is provided to their tenant. A copy of the revised process is to be sent to the Ombudsman.

These recommendations were amended on July 20 2011, because the original wording was incorrect. We apologise for this error and have taken steps to ensure that it is not repeated.