Decision Report 201507967

Summary

Miss C complained about the council's communication with her over a series of suspensions to her housing benefit.

We found that the council had communicated clearly with Miss C about the reasons for the suspensions and that she had been told what further information was required.

Although during our investigation we found that Miss C expected the council to reply to her emails unreasonably quickly, we did find administrative failings on the council's part, including sending an important email to the wrong address, not finding an attachment to one of Miss C's emails, and advising Miss C that a notice had been sent when it had not. They also failed to reply to two separate emails sent by Miss C. We therefore upheld the complaint and made a recommendation to address this.

Recommendations

We recommended that the council:

• review the handling of this case to establish the cause of administrative errors, and identify what steps might be taken to avoid recurrence. The council should then share learning from the review with relevant staff members.