Decision Report 201204522

Summary

Mr C needed a lot of support with housing matters. He was asked to go to his local housing office about a rent matter and called in, expecting to see one of two officers he had dealt with before, but they had both retired. He was introduced to his new housing officer, but was not happy with the way the interview went.

Mr C complained about the association’s investigation into his complaint about the housing officer, and also that the association delayed in providing him with the support of another officer.

Our investigation found that, although Mr C was unhappy with the association’s investigation of his complaint, they had treated it seriously and dealt with it properly, and gave him appropriate information in their responses. We also found that, after he complained, Mr C was allocated a different housing officer (Officer 2). However, Mr C told the association that he would rather deal with another he knew and was comfortable with (Officer 1).

Although we understood why Mr C requested this, he had at that point had no contact with Officer 2, so we did not consider it reasonable to ask the association to change arrangements, given that there had been no problems and that support was available to him.

As part of our investigation, we discovered that Officer 1 did not have capacity to support Mr C. However, we also noted that Mr C had not received a reply to his request to be allocated that officer, and we made a recommendation to address this.

Recommendations

We recommended that the association:

• apologise for failing to respond to Mr C's request to have a particular housing officer assigned to his case.