Repeated misgendering of a council tenant and former employee has resulted in Brighton and Hove City Council being ordered to pay £175 in compensation.
Despite requests not to use the honorific Mx instead of Miss, Brighton and Hove City Council continued to send correspondence to Craven Vale resident Natasha Burney with the wrong prefix.
Before making a complaint to the council, Natasha Burney, who is transgender, had contacted her line manager to ask that correspondence use the title Miss rather than Mx.
Miss Burney said that the incorrect use of her title caused distress.
After making the request she received communication from the council in its capacity as her landlord, using Mx, which resulted in the complaint of discrimination.
She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that she had never requested the Mx title. Her first complaint was made in November 2024, after making repeated requests for the correct title.
Following the initial complaint, the council had no record of a preferred title and said that the customer services and housing teams had separate databases and offered to update all service databases.
Miss Burney escalated the complaint on in November 2024, after providing evidence of her title request. However, the council said the communication they received from her was as an employee rather than customer.
Miss Burney complained again after receiving fresh correspondence in December 2024 from the council addressing her as Mx.
The ombudsman accepted that an update of the council’s employment records would not automatically update customer records.
When making a finding of maladministration, the ombudsman said: “The landlord said different services held separate records.
“However, the correspondence of (Tuesday) 3 December 2024 was issued by a team operating within its complaint and information rights functions.
“In the circumstances, it was reasonable to expect the landlord to have ensured that it had updated the resident’s preferred title within those functions following the earlier complaint.
“There is no evidence this occurred before the correspondence was issued.
“The evidence does not show that the landlord deliberately continued to use the title ‘Mx’ because of the resident’s protected characteristics.
“Rather, the issue appears to have arisen because the landlord did not effectively update or apply the resident’s preferred title within the relevant complaint handling functions.
“This amounted to a service failure. The landlord’s failure to update its records effectively resulted in the resident receiving further correspondence using a title she had said was incorrect.
“This caused frustration and inconvenience. It required her to spend additional time and trouble pursuing a further complaint. It also reasonably contributed to her feeling that the landlord had not acted on her earlier concerns.”
The ombudsman found that the council “did not demonstrate that it had considered its duties under the Equality Act 2010”.
The council has been ordered to send a written apology from a senior member of staff to Miss Burney in a “meaningful and empathetic” way by Thursday 24 September.
The council also has to pay £75 for the distress and inconvenience caused by the use of the incorrect title and a further £100 caused by its response and for discrimination.
The council must also confirm in writing which teams have updated their records to reflect Miss Burney’s preferred title, explain which other council services will hold separate records and confirm what the council has done to notify those services.
Miss Burney still has a number of other complaints against the council with the Housing Ombudsman.
On the decision, she said: “This formal Housing Ombudsman ruling of maladministration and service failure under the Equality Act 2010 is merely the tip of the iceberg, reflecting systemic bias currently facing double-digit scrutiny across ongoing oversight and ombudsman investigations.
“Sadly, having forced me into litigation, this is only the beginning of an astronomical cost to the public purse.”
Labour councillor Gill Williams, the council’s cabinet member for housing, said: “We are very sorry for the distress caused to the resident and accept the Housing Ombudsman’s findings.
“We recognise that we got things wrong and should have done better.
“We have accepted the ombudsman’s recommendations in full, apologised to the resident and are taking steps to improve our processes so residents’ preferred names and titles are used correctly and their concerns are properly considered in future.”
Last year, Miss Burney also fought an eviction order issued days after she received notification of rent arrears that she did not know she had because her bills were paid by direct debit.
She has also made complaints about data breaches, anti-social behaviour and poor cleaning, resulting in a ban from communicating with council officials.
In April 2025, Craven Vale Residents’ Association secretary Alan Cooke complained to the council’s chief executive Jess Gibbons and Labour council leader Bella Sankey that Miss Burney was treated as “persona non grata” despite doing so much for her community.
When a local authority publicly promotes itself as a champion of human rights, equality, and inclusion, residents naturally expect those values to be reflected in everyday municipal services. However, a succession of published rulings and independent Ombudsman findings tells a very different story.
When multiple external bodies repeatedly hold the council to account for service failures, maladministration, and breaches of equality standards, it reveals a profound disconnect between administrative branding and operational reality.
The broader concern is the human cost across the city: for every case that successfully navigates the complex path to a formal ruling, how many other residents—particularly those managing disabilities, health conditions, or other vulnerabilities—are left to quietly absorb the impact of substandard conditions simply because navigating the complaints system is too exhausting?
Effective local governance requires more than public declarations; it requires rigorous internal oversight, adherence to statutory duties, and structural accountability. Until policy commitments are reliably matched by frontline delivery, the administration risks failing the very communities it is sworn to protect.
I wonder how much money they have wasted this time.
This is becoming absolutely ridiculous. I suppose council tax will be going up next year to pay for all of this. How many more stories need to come out before the rival political parties step in and do something about these issues and stop the wasting public funds on defending the undefendable again
Worse yet, how many people asking to change their honorific and then asking for compensation when it wasn’t done will it actually take to bankrupt the corporation of Brighton and Hove ?
To be honest, reading this, it’s a simple failing of updating multiple records as an employee and as a customer. I don’t think AI-generated verbosity is particularly insightful in this case.
Get a grip, seriously.
It concerns me that yet again council tax is being wasted to cover up staff wrong doings. Time there was some accountability and the people responsible sacked
The other worrying thing is I wonder how much money they have already wasted pushing this individual into a lawsuit.
If they’ve already won here from the housing ombudsman, it would mean they have a valid case.
It looks like the council is again wasting huge amounts of money on a legal defense that is going to be lost. Wonder how much that is going to cost Brighton and Hove City Council Oh, I forgot. It’s not their money.
It’s everyone else’s public fund that’s being wasted on this.
They can spend as much as they like and cut all the services they want to fund for it. Lovely.
If an issue has been resolved with the ombudsman, then a lawsuit cannot be filed on the same thing.
Can I change my address to ‘Middlesex’
Only by moving there. But you can change your honorific tho.
Sure, in the same way you change your name on here from Mike, to Charlie, to Vespasian?
Hilarious! Bhcc caught by the Pronoun Police.
What will Bella say?
Perhaps she would ask whether those that use the phrase “Pronoun Police” could relocate to Clacton.
The council leader has said several times how trans friendly she is, standing with her trans friends and allies. Sounds like they talk the talk at the council, but they don’t walk the walk. The sheer persistent meanness of the behaviour in this case is indicative of a bullying organisation. What sort of example is coming from the political leadership and the top officers to empower staff to think they can behave like this? When are they going to practise what they preach? Can anyone even name another employer or company or other organisation which has been found in breach of the Equality Act, with the possible exception of the NHS? I hope this sobering example means we’re subjected to fewer sanctimonious sermons on this subject now, and those in office quietly start putting their own house in order instead of lecturing the rest of us who actually treat others with respect day in, day out.
These affairs are precisely what makes Reform seem normal and everyone else seem like complete nutcases. However well done to the Labour council, they don’t need to apologise. The ombudsman is obviously nuts as well.
Truly you can’t make this up! A man who says he’s a woman wins compensation from the council who sent him letters titled “Mx” instead of “Miss”…
This is the UK 2026 – heaven help us all…
They got LETTERS from the council??? They should feel privileged! Few other residents do.
Good grief.
Wasn’t there a recent UK Supreme Court ruling on this matter once and for all? Why not just follow that? The law.
That was a clarification on a definition. Anyway, the law was followed, if you actually read the article, you’ll see it was because the lady in question had two records as both an employee and as a customer; only one was updated.
It will come to pass that so called ‘progressive’ policies will be revealed as the ‘extreme’.
Man gets attention he seeks,and some compensation, it’s like a comedy show is now playing out in reality.
It also begs the question, why are the council employing people who are so easily distressed by such trivial things, how on earth can they be productive employees
Although in many ways, the council have bought this on themselves by pandering to all virtue signalling ideology nonsense
If I recall correctly, they’ve had several complaints over the years over a variety of things. Some of the ASB things were pretty severe, and they were successful in using the ombudsman on that, so I can see the appeal of doing it again.
Council wouldn’t want to just fire a litigious person like that, because they’ll likely file a lawsuit accusing them of retaliation.
Does suggest the handling of complaints needs looking at, especially if the same person is being failed by it multiple times.
Engaging in discussions with commentators who reflexively defend the council is often unproductive.
As certain online profiles consistently support institutional actions regardless of formal findings of maladministration and Equality Act breaches by independent oversight bodies.
When an independent regulatory body has definitively established that statutory standards and duties were breached attempting to rationalize or minimize those failures runs entirely counter to the documented facts
Thanks Jo, I tend to defend nuance, ironically, something AI generations tend to fail on quite badly. To make it clear to you, because you’re passive-aggressively suggesting it, the council made an error here.
However, maladministration, in this instance, means that there were two records of this person, only one was updated. Not a dark sinister plot. Although, I’m sure the regulars will think so.
It’s almost as if biological-born women are being mocked by impersonators. The world has gone mad.
Is this really the world we live in.. Somebody shoot me lol
The Housing Ombudsman defines maladministration as a formal decision that a landlord or housing authority has failed to meet its obligations ( Brighton and Hove City Council),
done something it should not have done, or delayed unreasonably, resulting in an adverse effect or injustice to the resident.
Specifically, the Ombudsman issues a finding of maladministration when an organization exhibits actions such as:
Failing to comply with relevant legal obligations, statutory standards, or regulatory codes of practice.
Failing to follow its own internal policies and administrative procedures.
Acting with unreasonable delays or poor operational practices.
Behaving inappropriately, inconsistently, or unreasonably toward a resident, which includes mishandling complaints or ignoring a resident’s vulnerabilities or statutory rights.
The Ombudsman categorizes these failures into escalating tiers depending on their scope and impact: service failure for minor, isolated administrative mistakes; maladministration for clear service breakdowns that adversely affect the resident and severe maladministration for prolonged, repeated, or systemic failures that cause significant distress or long-term detriment.
In this case, simply, inadequate record-keeping.
If you are going to post AI essays, at least make sure it uses English spellings.
Lack of training and software within the council, it should be that when a correction or addition is made then would be applied acroos the council systems, another reason for centralising data on residents, not spread around under various “emperors” afraid of losing power.
Agreed. You speak sense.
I’m confused.