Summary: Mrs X complains about the Council’s handling of her application for a Disabled Facilities Grant between 2017 and 2020. The Ombudsman has found fault because the Council took too long to progress the adaptations for the benefit of her disabled son. This caused frustration, distress and inconvenience. To remedy this injustice the Council has agreed to apologise, make a payment to Mrs X and review its practices.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complained about the Council’s handling of her request for adaptations to support her disabled son. In particular, she complained about:

• poor advice and communication; and
• delay.

2. Mrs X says this has caused considerable frustration, distress and inconvenience.

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What I have investigated

3. I have investigated the Council’s role in this matter up to May 2020 when the building work commenced. I understand Mrs X is unhappy with the quality of this work, but I have not investigated her complaint about this because it must first be considered by the Council.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
5. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

6. As part of my investigation I have:

• considered the complaint and documents provided by Mrs X;
• made written enquiries of Mrs X and considered her response;
• made enquiries of the Council and considered its response;
• considered the relevant law, guidance and Council policy;
• sent my draft decision to both parties and invited comments on it; and
• considered comments received from both parties before reaching my final decision.

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What I found

Disability adaptations

7. Disabled Facilities Grants (DFG’s) are provided under the terms of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. There is also detailed guidance on good practice.
8. Councils have a statutory duty to provide grant aid to disabled people for certain adaptations.
9. The Council will need to check that the proposed works are:
• necessary and appropriate to meet the disabled person’s needs.
• reasonable and practicable depending on the age and condition of the property.
10. Councils will often consult an occupational therapist (OT) from the social services department to make carry out the assessments.
11. The maximum grant that can be paid in England is £30,000.
12. The Act says councils should approve or refuse a grant application as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than six months after the date of the application. The works should be completed within 12 months of the approval.
13. The guidance says that where the process to secure a long term solution will be lengthy, then it is appropriate for interim help to be provided through the provision of equipment or temporary works. It says it is not acceptable that the disabled person should be left without interim help for a period of weeks or months.

The Council’s policy

14. The Council also has its own policy. This echoes the national guidance that once the funding application has been approved, the works must be completed within 12 months.
15. Requests for disability adaptations and DFGs are managed by “Care and Repair”. This is a service within the Council that clients have the option to use. There is a fee payable for this service.

What happened

16. I have set out below a summary of the key events. But it is not meant to show everything that happened.
17. Mrs X’s son (whom I shall refer to as Child Y) is of infant school age. He has cerebral palsy and epilepsy and requires support with personal care, mobility and other aspects of daily living.
18. In July 2017, Mrs X asked the Council for help with adaptations to her rented property (Property B). She told the Council she was struggling to get Child Y in and out of the house and up and down the stairs. Mrs X said she was suffering with back pain due to the amount of lifting she was having to do. Her landlord was a social housing association (“the Housing Association”). She needed more room, particularly as Child Y was growing and his equipment was getting larger.
19. She was referred to “Care and Repair”, the Council service that dealt with disability adaptations. An occupational therapy (“OT”) assessment took place in August 2017. The OT’s initial view was that Property B may be difficult to adapt and extend but she recommended a further “feasibility visit” with the Housing Association and architect to assess what was possible Two visits took place in September and December 2017. At this latter meeting, the Housing Association said it would consider building a downstairs extension as a bedroom for Child Y.
20. In January 2018, the Housing Association decided it was unable to support the extension because it was not appropriate for Child Y’s bedroom to be downstairs and for structural reasons.
21. Without an extension, Mrs X decided she could not continue to live a Property B. She immediately made an application to join the housing register. Mrs X continued to ask for support because she was still struggling at Property B, particularly around access issues. While the Council acknowledged and was sympathetic to Mrs X’s situation, no changes were made.
22. A suitable property became available in August 2017 (Property D), also owned by the Housing Association. Mrs X says she had some reservations about moving there because it was smaller and some distance from Child Y’s school. However, she was persuaded to accept it because she says she was told by the Council that Property D could be adapted and extended to cater for Child Y’s needs as he grew up and was her best option. She immediately submitted another DFG application to fund the adaptations. These were separated into three areas of work, all to be funded by the DFG of £30,000, plus any additional contribution agreed by the Housing Association from its adaptations budget:

• A stairlift.
• Internal adaptations including specialist toilet and washing facilities.
• An extension.

23. In October 2018 the DFG funding for the stairlift was approved. While discussions took place between the Mrs X, the OT, Care and Repair and the Housing Association about what needed to be done, it was agreed to prioritise the stairlift installation. This was fitted in January 2019. While Mrs X says the stairlift was a big help, she was becoming frustrated by the lack of progress with the other necessary adaptations and extension.
24. In July 2019, frustrated by the lack of progress, she complained to the Council about this, the bidding process and the unsuitability of Property D.
25. In August 2019, the Council responded as follows:

• The evidence did not support Mrs X’s opinion that she had been forced to accept Property D.
• It did not accept what Mrs X said about being denied the opportunity to be considered for a suitably adapted property in the same locality as Property B.
• It did not accept her view that the proposed adaptations to Property D were unworkable.
• While acknowledging the time that had passed since Mrs X first asked for help, the Council said most of the delay was down to the complications involved and was satisfied the matter had been “appropriately managed”.

26. In October 2019, planning permission was granted and tenders requested.
27. In December 2019, as no further work had taken place, Mrs X escalated her complaint to stage 2 of the Council’s complaints procedure. As part of her complaint she asked the Council to consider transferring the DFG budget to be used towards a mortgage payment on a bungalow.
28. In its second complaint response, the Council acknowledged the length of time that had passed, and the frustration felt by Mrs X. However, her complaint was not upheld because, “housing grant applications are complex, especially where major works are required and authorisations and permissions are needed….the reasons for the major works not progressing are outside of the Council’s control”.
29. The Council explained to Mrs X it could not use DFG funds to purchase a bungalow. It also told Mrs X that while the internal adaptations could go ahead, the cost of the extension was too high and could not proceed without an additional funding source. Mrs X was given the option of re-joining the housing register.
30. Disappointed by this response, Mrs X complained to the Ombudsman.
31. In February 2020, some progress was made when the landlord agreed to make a significant contribution to the cost of the work following negotiations from Council officers. The extension started in May 2020 and was completed in July 2020. I understand Mrs X is unhappy with the standard of the work, but this will be the subject of a separate complaint if Mrs X chooses to do so.

Analysis

32. Mrs X complains about several matters that that I will consider separately:

Poor advice and delay while living in Property B

33. Mrs X says she only agreed to move to Property D after waiting too long for unsuccessful adaptations to Property B and she was told the new house was suitable for adaptations, despite her reservations about its size and location. She said she was “bullied” into accepting it. The Council denies this claim and says it was Mrs X’s choice to move there. She also complains about the time it took from asking for support to being told their best option was to move
34. In reaching my decision about this, I have considered the Council’s case records from the relevant time.
35. Mrs X first asked for help in July 2017. An OT assessment took place in August 2017 which flagged up possible problems.
36. While it took approximately six months for a decision to be made that adaptations were not feasible, the records show work was ongoing during that time to progress the case. Two multi-agency meetings were held and new medical information about Child Y’s development and future needs required consideration.
37. The evidence shows the Council, was proactive in trying to progress the case and for this reason I do not find there was fault with the time it took. The time was proportionate to the complexity of the situation.
38. Mrs X says the decision that the extension could not be supported was a complete “about turn” from what had been said at the December meeting. I have no reason to doubt Mrs X’s recollection, but I cannot hold the Council responsible for this because the Council had no control over the decision of the Housing Association not to agree to the extension.
39. I have found no evidence that Mrs X was pressurised into accepting Property D. I have read the Council’s complaint response about this and am satisfied the Council made it clear that the decision about whether to accept a particular house lay with her.

Lack of housing options when Mrs X joined the housing register in January 2018

40. Mrs X says she was aware of other suitable properties near to Property D that she says she should have been offered or been able to bid on. I have read the emails between the Council’s housing officer and Mrs X when she raised this.
41. She also questioned her priority banding and ability to bid on three bedroom bungalows.
42. The emails show Mrs X was correctly advised at the time. Both the number of months Mrs X spent waiting for a property and the limited options were due to a shortage of supply rather than an attempt by the Council to restrict Mrs X’s choices. The emails also show the Council considered the other properties put forward by Mrs X and explained the reasons why they were either unsuitable or she was ineligible.
43. I have not found the Council to be at fault.

Delay in completing adaptations to Property D

44. The chronology above shows Mrs X made her second application for a DFG in August 2018 when she moved into property D. The major work was not completed until July 2020, nearly two years later. This is twice the recommended timescale set out in both national and local policy.
45. The Council has said this delay was justified because of the complications involved. I can only partially agree with this assessment.
46. I agree with the Council that this was complex case for the following reasons:

• Ownership of Property D.
• Layout of Property D.
• Child Y’s needs were evolving.
• Scale of the adaptions required.

47. Because of this, I accept it was always going to take some time to get to position where the work was both agreed and funded. However, the Ombudsman would expect to see evidence of exceptional circumstances for such a long delay to be justified, particularly as a child in need was involved.
48. To the Council’s credit, it demonstrated good practice by actioning the stairlift installation in reasonably good time, within six months from when Mrs X made her DFG application. The evidence also shows there was a significant amount of negotiation by Council officers with the Housing Authority about funding.
49. But what happened afterwards took too long. The records show a potential funding issue was identified in January 2019, together with uncertainty about what the Housing Association would be responsible for outside of the DFG process. The tending process for the internal works did not start until July 2019, nearly a year after the initial application.
50. It was not until November 2019, that Mrs X was told there was a funding shortfall. This became apparent once the tender quotations for the external works had been received. While the records show activity was taking place during this time, Mrs X was not always kept informed about what was happening which meant she had to make several enquiries to request an update at various times. While this was a shortcoming, I do not consider this was so serious as to make a formal finding of fault, because the underlying problem was the unresolved funding issue rather than poor communication.
51. Without additional funding in place, only the internal works could potentially go ahead. Mrs X was understandably reluctant for this to go ahead without the extension she so desperately needed, especially as Child Y needed more space for possible post-operative physiotherapy. Mrs X took the stance that she may as well move somewhere else than stay somewhere that would always be too small. This was an entirely reasonable position for her to take in the best interest of her family.
52. In response to her last resort suggestion that she may have to re-join the housing register, the Council told her the DFG process would have to stop immediately. I do not criticise the Council for saying this. The DFG rules would not allow it to go further. But nevertheless, this left Mrs X in an unenviable position.
53. She was effectively given two choices. Either to “hang on” and see it any additional funding could be found (either from her own resources or a charity), or risk re-joining the housing register, and be struggling to cope for many more months, if not years.
54. Mrs X was understandably disappointed that it had taken so many months for the Council to realise the adaptations were too expensive.
55. I agree with Mrs X. Regardless of the complexity of the situation, it should not have taken so long. The Council’s policy allows approximately 20 weeks to get to the stage of receiving tenders for the proposed works. Prior to this, an architect would have produced drawings that will have formed the basis of a works specification.
56. From August 2018, when Mrs X made her application for DFG funding, it took until November 2019 to obtain the tenders that confirmed the funding shortfall. This is approximately eleven months longer that it should have taken. This delay is fault.
57. It then took a further six months to start work on the extension. Some of this time was spent identifying a solution to the funding issue. But the funding issue was identified in January the previous year. Regardless of the difficulties involved, the Council should have been more proactive in reaching a conclusion – even if it had been that the extension was not possible. To allow the situation to remain unresolved for such a long time created significant uncertainty for Mrs X and her family, particularly as the only other option was to move house again. For this reason, I have found the Council to be at fault.

Injustice

58. To summarise, I have found fault in time it took to carry out the adaptations to Property D.
59. During this time, I am satisfied Mrs X was struggling to cope and the lack of space and adaptations affected the whole family. It is clear from the extensive correspondence between Mrs X and various officers that she made it very clear how desperately she needed more space.
60. Also, if the Council had not delayed, Mrs X could have complained significantly earlier to the Ombudsman for a resolution to her complaint, thus allowing the matter to progress in a timelier manner. As a result, Mrs X has been caused additional unnecessary frustration and inconvenience.

Agreed action

61. To remedy the fault and injustice identified in this decision statement, the Council has agreed to take the following action within four weeks from the date of my final decision:
1. Apologise in writing to Mrs X.
2. Pay Mrs X £1650 in recognition of the identified 11 month delay in the DFG process. This is £150 for every month of delay. In deciding on this amount, I have had regard to the Ombudsman’s “Guidance on Remedies”.
3. Reflect on the issues identified in this decision statement and identify any areas of service improvement. The Council should prepare a short report setting out what the Council intend to do to ensure delay is avoided in other cases. This report has been shared with the Ombudsman in response to my draft decision and sets out several positive service area reviews and improvements.

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Final decision

62. The Ombudsman has found the Council to be at fault because it took too long to arrange disability adaptations for the benefit of Mrs X’s son. The Council has recommended a suitable remedy.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman