AN authority's benefits department has been described as "poor" by the local government ombudsman.

Patricia Thomas found Hartlepool Borough Council's housing benefit department guilty of "maladministration causing injustice".

She made the judgement after investigating the case of unnamed landlords - a Hartlepool couple - who had not received the housing benefit of their tenants.

The ombudsman agreed that the benefit was not paid to the landlords despite the expressed wishes of the tenants.

The council, which the ombudsman said had wrongly overridden the wishes of tenants, has agreed to pay £1,025 to the landlords and has taken steps to improve its service.

In a prepared statement, a spokesman for the ombudsman said: "The ombudsman found the record keeping of the council to be poor and that it had made a worryingly large number of mistakes in the way it calculated the housing benefit due to claimants.

"The ombudsman found the standard of notification to the landlords to be poor and, overall, she found that maladministration by the council had put the landlords to a great deal of trouble in terms of effort needed to clarify matters with the council and in pursuing their complaint with the ombudsman."

The report explained that the landlords had owned a guest house in the town since 1998.

Tenants on housing benefits were paid a maximum of £46.70 per week.

However, payments were taking so long to arrive that often tenants left before it arrived and the landlords did not receive any money.

The couple decided to ask for money up front from clients and require benefit money to be paid directly to themselves.

A spokesman for the council said: "The council accepts the ombudsman's report and measures have since been put in place to improve the housing benefit service to landlords.

"As a council we strive to deliver a wide range of quality services.

"We do take all complaints seriously and the ombudsman has acknowledged that the council responded very positively to this particular complaint."

Latest statistics revealed that, during the last year, England's three local government ombudsmen received 17,500 complaints.