South Cambridgeshire District Council (18 007 828)

Category : Housing > Homelessness

Decision : Upheld

Decision date : 17 Feb 2020

The Ombudsman's final decision:

Summary: There was fault when the Council disposed of personal belongings Mr X left in interim accommodation he occupied when he was homeless. This caused a significant injustice to Mr X. The Council has agreed to provide a suitable remedy.

The complaint

  1. Mr X complains that the Council disposed of all the personal belongings he had left in interim accommodation it provided when he was homeless.
  2. Mr X refused the Council’s offer of compensation because it was not enough to replace all the items he had lost. He says the offer did not recognise the distress caused by the loss of all his belongings, including some items of sentimental value.

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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 have spoken to Mr X and considered all the information he sent me, including his list of the items left in the property and their estimated value.
  2. I have written to Mr X and the Council with my draft decision and considered their comments.

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What I found

  1. Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 (as amended) and the Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities set out councils’ duties and powers to people who are homeless, or threatened with homelessness.
  2. 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).
  3. The Council also has a power to arrange interim accommodation for a homeless applicant while it carries out a review of an adverse homelessness decision [ Housing Act 1996, section 188(3)]
  4. Where a council owes the applicant a housing duty under Part 7 of the Act, it must protect his or her personal property prevent loss or damage and the applicant cannot make suitable arrangements to protect it.
  5. The council’s duty to protect the applicant’s property does not automatically end when the other housing duties cease. It must continue to take reasonable steps to protect property if necessary. The council may end the arrangement if it believes there is no longer a risk to the property.
  6. When a council no longer has a duty to store the applicant’s property, it must notify the applicant in writing and give reasons. The notification must be given to the applicant or sent to the last known address. [Housing Act 1996, section 212(5)]

What happened

  1. Mr X became homeless following a relationship breakdown and a Court order excluding him from the marital home. He has long-term serious medical conditions and claims disability benefits.
  2. The Council arranged interim accommodation for Mr X while it reviewed its decision that he was intentionally homeless. It placed him in an unfurnished Council house on a temporary basis in April 2017. Mr X says he took his own furniture to the interim accommodation.
  3. Mr X felt unsafe in the interim accommodation due to threats and intimidation by a neighbour. He said he left the property on the advice of a police officer and went to stay temporarily with his daughter who lives a considerable distance away. The Council says it contacted the police officer who denied telling Mr X it was not safe for him to remain there.
  4. Mr X says he took a few items of clothing and his television to his daughter’s home because he did not expect to stay long. He left all his other belongings in the interim accommodation.
  5. When the Council discovered Mr X was no longer occupying the accommodation, it issued a Notice To Quit. An officer in the neighbourhood housing management team delivered the Notice to the interim accommodation on 24 May 2017. The Notice gave Mr X 28 days’ notice to vacate.
  6. On the same day a homelessness officer in the Housing Options team wrote to tell Mr X that the Council was ending its duty to provide him with interim accommodation. She sent this letter to Mr X at his daughter’s address. The letter did not explain that a Notice to Quit had already been delivered to the interim accommodation or specify the date when Mr X had to vacate the property. It said:

“Housing Management will be in contact with you to discuss you clearing the property and handing the keys back.”

  1. Mr X did not return to the interim accommodation. His daughter went there from time to time to collect his post. Mr X says he did not hear from the Housing Management team again and assumed it had changed its mind. His daughter went to the property and found the Notice to Quit two days before it expired and he was due to vacate the property.
  2. On 20 June Mr X contacted an officer in the housing management team. According to the officer’s later recollection, she tried to find out whether Mr X intended to return to the interim accommodation. The Council says the neighbour had left his property by then. She says Mr X was angry and abusive and terminated the call without letting her speak.
  3. On 21 June 2017 Mr X went to the Council’s office to hand in keys to the property. An officer on reception gave him a receipt. Mr X says he asked the officer about making an appointment to collect his belongings. He says the receptionist went away to get advice and told him someone would contact him. The Council says the usual practice is for a duty officer to speak to the person while they were in the building to arrange an appointment rather than making contact later.
  4. There is no written record of the discussion between Mr X and the officer on 21 June. The CCTV evidence from June 2017 is no longer available.
  5. On 22 June Mr X sent an email to the Benefits Service to confirm he had handed in the keys. He did not refer to his belongings still being in the property.
  6. Mr X did not receive any written notice from the Council that it intended to dispose of his belongings. He was not given an opportunity to collect them. The Council accepts this should have happened. It also accepts it failed to consider the option of storing the items to give Mr X time to make suitable arrangements.
  7. On 29 June 2017 a surveyor inspected the property and ordered works to make the property ready to re-let. This included clearance of the property. The contractors did not make a written record of the items they removed from the property or take any photographs.
  8. Mr X says he went to the accommodation a few weeks later and discovered the property had been cleared and all his belongings had gone. He contacted the Council on 31 July 2017 to ask what had happened to them. The Council confirmed that contractors had cleared the property and disposed of everything Mr X had left there.

The Council’s complaint- handling

  1. There are two stages in the Council’s complaints procedure. At the first stage, the Head of Service or Service Manager should investigate and reply within 10 working days.
  2. If the complainant is not satisfied with the Stage One reply, and requests further investigation, it should be passed to a member of the Executive Management Team who reviews the complaint, liaises with the appropriate Head of Service and/or Service Manager and responds within 20 working days.

What happened

  1. On 31 July 2017 Mr X made a complaint to the Council when he discovered his belongings had been cleared from the property.
  2. A manager in the housing management team replied on 18 August 2017. He said the Council had served a Notice to Quit because it had been informed Mr X was no longer living in the property and he had significant rent arrears.
  3. An officer contacted Mr X on 20 June to ask whether he intended to return to the property but her records indicate that Mr X terminated the call.
  4. The manager said there was no record that Mr X asked for someone to contact him to make an appointment to retrieve your possessions. When the surveyor inspected the property a few days later, he assumed the remaining possessions had been abandoned and he arranged for contractors to clear the property and dispose of them. He did not inform Mr X about how to take his complaint to the next stage.
  5. Mr X contacted the manager on 25 August 2017 to express his dissatisfaction and request further investigation. In mid-September 2017 the manager confirmed he had passed the complaint on to a named officer who would ensure a senior manager responded within the required timescale.
  6. The Council did not respond to the Stage Two complaint. Mr X first contacted our service in August 2018. After we contacted the Council in 2018, it agreed to carry out a Stage Two investigation. The manager who had investigated the Stage One complaint had some contact with Mr X between March and May 2019 and told him his complaint was still being investigated. In fact, the investigation had not yet started.
  7. The Council finally sent Mr X the decision letter on 5 July 2019, some 23 months after he had first requested a Stage Two investigation. The investigating officer apologised for the Council’s poor handling of the complaint and the failure to respond within the required 20 working day timescale. She offered Mr X £500 compensation to recognise the frustration caused by this delay.
  8. The investigating officer did not consider there was fault in the way the Council had handled the clearance of the property. She noted Mr X had not responded to the Council’s request for a list of the items he had left there so it was difficult to put a value on the items he had lost. She offered £500 as a goodwill gesture for the items. The Council’s total offer was £1,000.
  9. Mr X did not accept this offer and resubmitted his complaint to the Ombudsman.
  10. During this investigation, the Council said it has recently launched a new online complaints portal to log and track the progress of all complaints. This can be monitored centrally to ensure officers meet appropriate timescales. It also means that if staff leave the Council, any open complaints can be reassigned.

Mr X’s belongings

  1. During our investigation, Mr X found the original list he compiled in 2017 of the items he had left in the accommodation. It includes several items of furniture, white goods and other electrical appliances, clothing and some individual high value items He estimated the total value of the items then as £6,445.
  2. Mr X says he also lost some irreplaceable items of sentimental value such as family photographs and belongings he had inherited from his late father.
  3. Mr X says he has spent about £4,000 so far on replacement items for his new home. He used a refund of benefits to fund these purchases.
  4. The Council says it has no records of the items the contractors removed from Mr X’s temporary accommodation, their condition or likely value.
  5. After considering our enquiry letter, the Council made a new proposal. It offered to pay Mr X:
    • £500 for the delay in the Stage Two investigation;
    • £500 to acknowledge the distress caused by the loss of all his personal belongings;
    • £2,500 for the destroyed items.
  6. The Council said its revised offer of £2,500 for the disposal of belongings reflects its doubts about the accuracy of Mr X’s list and valuation. It is not convinced he could have retrieved all the items on his list from the marital home, or bought new ones, in the short time he occupied the property.
  7. In response to my draft decision, Mr X provided further information to explain how he had purchased some items and retrieved others from his former marital home and storage. I asked the Council to consider Mr X’s comments and my proposal for a higher financial remedy.

Analysis

  1. The Housing Options service wrote to Mr X while he was staying with his daughter to tell him the Council would end the interim accommodation duty. This put him on notice that his licence to occupy the accommodation would soon end. But the letter said the housing management team would contact Mr X to discuss the arrangements to remove his belongings and return the keys. So, Mr X expected there would be some further contact.
  2. The Housing Options team knew Mr X was staying with his daughter. It would have been good practice to have shared this information with the housing management team. The housing management team could then have delivered the Notice to Quit to the interim accommodation and sent a copy to Mr X at his daughter’s address. If that had happened, Mr X would have known he only had a short time to remove his belongings from the property.
  3. Mr X says he assumed the Council had changed its mind when he did not hear anything further. It was unwise to make that assumption in view of the letter sent to him. Mr X’s daughter did not collect his mail from the interim accommodation frequently because she did not live nearby. So, Mr X only saw the Notice to Quit a couple of days before his licence expired.
  4. Mr X could have discussed the arrangements for collecting his belongings with the officer who called him on 20 June 2017. But it seems he ended the call without raising this issue. There is insufficient evidence for me to establish what happened when Mr X visited the Council offices on 21 June 2017 to return the keys. There is no written record, other than the receipt for the keys, and the CCTV evidence is no longer available.
  5. The key point is that the Council had accommodated Mr X under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996. Even when it ended the housing duty, it still had a continuing duty to protect his belongings if they were at risk of being lost or damaged. It knew Mr X had not made suitable arrangements to do so. The Council could have put the items into storage temporarily rather than disposing of them immediately. It did not consider this option. It also did not give Mr X the required notice to say it intended to dispose of the items and its reasons for doing so. Finally, its contractors did not keep any record of the items they removed from the property. These were significant faults.
  6. In response to our enquiries, the Council increased its offer of compensation to £3,500. After considering further evidence from Mr X, and my recommendations, the Council agreed to increase this to £4,250. This includes £500 for Mr X’s distress, and £500 for the unreasonable delay in investigating the Stage Two complaint.
  7. Mr X wanted a more substantial payment. But we cannot verify Mr X’s statement that all these items were in the property in June 2017. Nor can we assess whether he has accurately valued the items.
  8. Having considered all these factors, I have decided that £4,250 is a fair and proportionate remedy for the injustice caused by the Council’s faults. The Council has already apologised to Mr X in the Stage Two decision letter.

Agreed action

  1. Within one month of the final decision, the Council will:
    • pay Mr X £4,250;
    • review its procedures for clearing properties and disposing of belongings to ensure it complies with the legal duties in sections 211 and 212 of the Housing Act 1996;
    • ensure officers and contractors who perform these duties are familiar with the procedures by issuing written instructions or arranging appropriate training.

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Final decision

  1. I have completed the investigation and found Mr X suffered injustice because the Council was at fault when it disposed of his personal belongings. The Council accepts my findings and has agreed to provide a suitable remedy.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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