Decision Report 201502537

Summary

Ms C complained about the housing association after they refused to grant her priority under their exceptional housing need category. She felt that they had failed to properly consider her request. We found that their procedure for assessing requests under this category was unclear. It was difficult to tell how, and by whom, requests were supposed to be progressed and decided. We also found, in her case, that they had failed to show how, why, or by whom the decision had been made. They accepted that they had not followed the procedure in Ms C's case, even though the procedure clearly stated that it was to be used for all requests of this kind. As such, we upheld Ms C's complaint.

Recommendations

We recommended that the association:

• apologise to Ms C for the failings identified by our investigation;
• review their exceptional housing need procedure to clarify when a request will or will not be considered, how decisions will be made at each stage of the process, and who will make those decisions; and
• reconsider Ms C's request under the revised procedure.