South Oxfordshire District Council has been asked to reconsider its response to a Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) report about the historic sale of two council houses.

The LGO has issued a further report after the council did not implement one of the initial report’s recommendations.

In the original report, issued in September 2015, the council was found at fault after two homeowners complained to the LGO about the way the council handled the sale of their homes.

The homeowners both lived out of the area when they bought their ex-local authority homes some years ago. They were aware that there was a so-called Section 157 restriction on the properties but the council did not inform the solicitors of the full extent of that restriction, which was that the homes should only have been sold to people living in a specific area. The council also did not check if the homeowners were entitled to buy the properties.