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 Equalities 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