Benefit problems are Lost in translation

Solicitors were appointed to complain on behalf of Mrs Joseph (not her real name) about a council’s handling of her housing benefit claim. Mrs Joseph’s native language is Spanish and she could not communicate easily in English.

Mrs Joseph was 60 years old and received income support and housing benefit. When she made the benefit claim that led to her complaint, she had been living in private rented accommodation for nine years.

For many years Mrs Joseph received full housing benefit, which was paid direct to her landlord and covered her rent in full. Mrs Joseph was then informed that her housing benefit renewal claim had been reviewed and had been capped in line with the maximum rent set by the rent officer. The result was that the housing benefit did not cover her full rental liability and she had no means of paying the shortfall of £54 a month.

Mrs Joseph had asked the solicitor to handle her benefit claim because she could not cope with it herself. The solicitor asked the council to refer the case back to the rent officer for redetermination and they also requested that the council consider her for a discretionary housing payment if housing benefit still did not cover her rental liability after the redetermination was made.

After getting no reply to five letters to the council, the solicitor complained to the ombudsman. They explained that Mrs Joseph had arrears of about £1000 and her landlord would take action if things were not resolved quickly.

Three months later the solicitor told the ombudsman that the rent officer had reviewed the position and had not changed his view that Mrs Joseph’s rent was significantly high, but the council had still not considered the application for a discretionary housing payment.

Meanwhile, the landlord had issued possession proceedings and a notice of eviction was issued. Mrs Joseph’s rent arrears then stood at £4500, equivalent to about six months’ rent, largely because, six months earlier, she had changed landlord and although she had told the council, it had not amended its records and had continued to pay the benefit to the old landlord.

Mrs Joseph was evicted. She approached the council for assistance as a homeless person. The council accepted that she was unintentionally homeless and in priority need. It offered her temporary accommodation in a hostel and authorised her for permanent rehousing. But the council failed to register Mrs Joseph’s application on its computer system and did not discover this for about two months, and so no offers of housing were made.

The council accepted she was unintentionally homeless but failed to register her housing application for two months

The council then rehoused Mrs Joseph and agreed to increase the payments it was making to her to cover her rent.

The council made serious mistakes with Mrs Joseph’s claim, including failing to make benefit payments to her landlord, taking too long to refer the case to the rent officer, and taking too long to decide her claim for a discretionary housing payment. It also took too long to authorise her housing application for offers after it decided to award her emergency priority.

These delays and errors led to Mrs Joseph accruing rent arrears and being evicted from her home. She suffered distress and uncertainty while she waited to learn if her application for assistance as a homeless person was accepted, and then again while she waited to learn when and where she would be offered another permanent home. The ombudsman had no reason to believe that Mrs Joseph would have faced eviction from her home if the council had dealt with her housing benefit properly.

The council accepted it had made mistakes and agreed to remedy the injustice to Mrs Joseph by paying her £2500 and paying the court costs awarded against her when the eviction notice was made.

The council also agreed to undertake a review of its procedures to prevent a recurrence of the problems experienced by Mrs Joseph. It introduced an assessment team specialising in cases that required a referral to the rent officer and arranged for all discretionary housing payment applications to be dealt with by housing benefit team leaders.

The ombudsman said: “This case shows that continuing difficulties with the council’s housing benefit administration can have very serious consequences for the wellbeing of persons requiring help with their housing costs.”