Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (18 007 625)

Category : Housing > Homelessness

Decision : Upheld

Decision date : 02 Apr 2019

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: Mrs B complains the Council delayed in making its decision on her homelessness application. The Ombudsman finds there were several faults by the Council. As well as a long delay in making a decision on the homelessness application, there was delay in offering temporary accommodation once the Council accepted it owed Mrs B the main homelessness duty. These delays were fault. There was also fault in the Council’s record keeping and in its handling of a reported rodent infestation in interim accommodation. These faults led to injustice for Mrs B and her two young children, which the Council has agreed to remedy.

The complaint

  1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mrs B, complains the Council delayed in making its decision on her homelessness application.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

  1. 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)
  2. 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

  1. I considered all the information provided by Mrs B about her complaint. I made written enquiries of the Council and took account of the responses it provided.
  2. I provided Mrs B and the Council with a draft of this decision and took account of all comments received in response.

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What I found

  1. Mrs B presented to the Council as homeless on 26 September 2017 with her two children (then aged two and five). She was fleeing from her marital home due to domestic violence.

The Council’s duties in respect of homelessness

  1. When a person applies to a council for accommodation and it has reason to believe they may be homeless or threatened with homelessness, several duties arise, including:
  • to make enquiries;
  • to secure suitable accommodation for certain applicants pending the outcome of the enquiries;
  • to notify the applicant of the decision in writing and the right to request a review of the decision.
  1. There are no statutory time limits for completing enquiries, however the Homelessness Code of Guidance, issued by the Government in 2006, recommends councils aim to complete their enquiries within 33 working days.
  2. If the Council thinks someone is homeless and in priority need, it must, if the person asks for it, provide emergency accommodation until it has finished assessing the homelessness application. Examples of priority need are:
  • people with dependent children;
  • pregnant women;
  • people with serious health problems;
  • some elderly people.
  1. A council must secure interim accommodation for applicants and their household if it has reason to believe they may be homeless, eligible for assistance and have a priority need. (Housing Act 1996, section 188)
  2. Under the Housing Act 1996, section 193, the relevant legislation applicable at the time of Mrs B’s homelessness application, if the Council was satisfied the applicant was eligible, homeless, in priority need and unintentionally homeless it owed them the main homelessness duty. Generally, compliance with this duty would be satisfied by the Council arranging temporary accommodation until it made a suitable offer of social housing or private rented accommodation.

What happened in this case

  1. The Council took a homelessness application and arranged interim accommodation for her and the children at Address X, a self-contained one-bedroom flat.

Issues with that accommodation

  1. On 11 October 2017 Mrs B sent an email to the Council in which she reported water leaking from the bath, unsafe windows, and the sighting of a rat in the property. On the same day the Council sent an email to the letting agent for the property, referring to Mrs B’s report that water let out from the appeared to run into the bedroom from under the carpet. The agent was asked to arrange inspection of the pipes. The Council also asked for window security to be checked, saying it seemed the windows did not have restricted opening and the children could open them with ease. There was no reference made to the report of rats.
  2. The Council says the letting agent has no records of this period as it was taken over by another company in July 2018 and its records destroyed. This is fault. The provider was acting for the Council in these matters and the Council should be able to verify what action was taken on its behalf.
  3. On 31 October 2017 the Council said it had made Mrs B an appointment for 2 November with a housing allocations officer. Mrs B says that when she went the appointment the officer was dismissive of the issue of rats and mice and joked about it.
  4. On 14 March 2018 Mrs B emailed the same officer, again referring to rats and mice in the property as well as reporting that she had had no hot water since moving in to the property. The Council says it has no records regarding the appointment and no file notes, and the officer Mrs B had been communicating with had since left the Council. I have not been provided with evidence from Mrs B to show she reported the issue of hot water any earlier than March 2018, but the lack of records available from the Council must also be taken into account. There were failures in record keeping here which were fault. On balance I am satisfied the Council failed to act on reports of rodent infestation from October 2017 and on the lack of hot water from at least 14 March 2018.

The next interim accommodation and subsequent offer

  1. On 21 March 2018 Mrs B was moved to different interim accommodation, another one bedroom flat (Property Y). On 13 August 2018 the Council asked Mrs B to move again to different interim accommodation, a two-bedroom flat (Property Z). Mrs B says she was initially told the property was much bigger and that she could take her belongings, but when she went to sign for the keys she was told she could not take her furniture with her and that the Council could arrange storage for her belongings but that she would have to bear the cost. The Council says Mrs B asked to take her washing machine with her and was told she could not do this as the block has a communal laundry facility.
  2. Regarding storage of belongings, there are no records that this was discussed. However, the Council has a policy of subsidising storage for all homeless households and it says Mrs B was told her possessions could be stored but that she would have to make a small contribution to the cost. The Council says Mrs B became angry and left the interview. Mrs B says she left having refused to sign the papers for the property because of the response she had been given about storage. In an audio recording of the interview obtained by Mrs B, the Cl’s officer clearly tells Mrs B the Council does not provide storage, and no indication is given that any help was available at all with storage, despite Mrs B saying she needed such help and asking what she would do with her belongings if she took this accommodation. The Council’s policy is to offer subsidised storage. It should have done so in this case and it should have kept a record of the discussion about it. The failure to do this was fault.
  3. The Council considered the offer of Property Z was reasonable, suitable and affordable, and if Mrs B refused it without good reason it would discharge its duty to provide interim accommodation under S188 Housing Act 1996, Part 7. It therefore wrote to her on 20 August 2018 confirming the ending of its duty under this legislation. It said she had refused the opportunity to view the property on 16 August and the following day had confirmed refusal to the allocations officer. The Council said it would no longer provide her with interim accommodation and her accommodation at Property Y was therefore terminated with effect from 14 August 2018. That was a decision the Council was entitled to make.
  4. Mrs B then made her own arrangement with the landlord of Property Y to stay on there paying rent.

Mrs B complains to the Council

  1. In August 2018, after the offer of Property Z had been made, Mrs B complained to the Council. Her complaint was about how the offer of Property Z had been dealt with, which she feels gave her insufficient notice to move and dd not take account of her personal circumstances. The Council replied promptly. It did not uphold her complaint. I do not find fault with that.

The Council accepts the full homelessness duty

  1. I turn back now to the homelessness application Mrs B had made in September 2017. As set out in paragraph 8 above, the expectation is that councils should complete their enquiries within 33 working days. Having done so the Council should issue its decision. In this case, the Council did not issue its decision on Mrs B’s homelessness application until 27 November 2018. If the Council had made its decision within 33 working days of the application date 26 September 2017 (and no evidence has been provided that enquiries were made leading to delays in the timescale), the decision would have been issued by 10 November 2017. So, there was effectively in excess of a year’s delay. That was fault.
  2. Having accepted its duty to Mrs B as an unintentionally homeless person, eligible for assistance and in priority need, the Council set out its responsibility to secure temporary accommodation for her and her children. The Council made Mrs B an offer of temporary accommodation, which she accepted, on 18 February 2019.
  3. However, the failure to promptly offer temporary accommodation once the Council accepted its duty to do so in November 2018 was fault.

Injustice to Mrs B and her family

  1. If there had not been the very long delay in issuing a decision on Mrs B’s homelessness application, she and her family would likely have been moved out of interim accommodation and into longer term temporary accommodation sooner. The difficulties Mrs B encountered associated with moving between interim accommodation addresses might also therefore have been avoided.
  2. Further, Mrs B was prevented from joining the housing allocations register until the decision had been made on her homelessness application. So, if the delay had not occurred, instead of being given a registration date of 27 November 2018, she would have had a registration date of 10 November 2017. It is however very unlikely that she lost out on the opportunity to successfully bid for property in the interim, given the average waiting times for property in the Council’s area.
  3. In respect of the failure to deal with reports of rodent infestation and lack of hot water, on the evidence so far seen Mrs B and her two young children were living in a property affected by rats and mice for five months, and without hot water for at least a week. Unaddressed, these factors meant that the property was not suitable for her and her young children.
  4. In respect of the failure to offer Mrs B assistance with storage costs, Mrs B was deprived of information she was entitled to and which would have allowed her to make a fully informed choice about the offer of Property Z.
  5. I turn now to the failure to offer temporary accommodation promptly after accepting the full homelessness duty was owed in November 2018. As the Council did not do this until February 2019, Mrs B was deprived of the certainty of longer-term temporary accommodation in the interim and the associated right of review if what she was offered in this regard was deemed by her to be unsuitable.

Agreed action

  1. To address the injustice identified above, I recommended that within four weeks of the date of the decision on this complaint the Council:
  • Issues Mrs B with a formal written apology;
  • Pays her £1200; and
  • Revises the effective date of her housing application to 10 November 2017, assigns her the correct banding in recognition of her homeless status and writes to her promptly to confirm this.
  1. I made no additional financial recommendation to address the lack of information about help with storage costs for Property Z. This is because if she had been correctly advised and had accepted the offer, her contribution towards storage costs would have been £17.50 per week, which was more expensive than the £30 monthly contribution she was making towards her rent at Property Y where she chose to stay.
  2. I further recommended that within three months of the date of the decision on this complaint the Council reviews lessons learned from it and sets out the measures it will implement, or has now implemented, to address identified failings. I note that the Council has confirmed that the delay in issuing a homelessness decision in this case was caused when the officer dealing with her application left the Council’s employ, and that a new IT system is now in place which flags all outstanding cases. There are however other failings which need to be addressed, including in respect of record-keeping and in staff awareness of duties to the homeless, noting that Mrs B was in interim accommodation for almost a year and despite numerous contacts in that time the failure to issue a decision on her homelessness application made in September 2017 was not picked up.
  3. The Council has agreed to my recommendations.

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Final decision

  1. I have completed my investigation on the basis set out above.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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