Summary: There was fault by the Council. It failed to properly assess Mr X’s housing needs and failed to make sure that the accommodation it moved him to was suitable. It took too long to assess his care needs and did not progress with any support planning to meet these. The Council failed to respond to his complaint and closed this when it should not have done. The Council’s failings had a serious impact on Mr X’s mental health, and his ability to continue with medical treatment. The Council has agreed to take action to remedy the injustice.

The complaint

1. Mr X complains about how the Council handled his housing situation from April 2022. In particular, he says:
• the Council first said he could not live alone due to his ill health. It then provided him with unsuitable accommodation. His accommodation was in disrepair, the doors were not lockable, the property was not safe nor licensed as a House in Multiple Occupation. The Council moved him to another property where he had no lockable door to his room and no heating. Mr X also could not get his adult social care needs met in either property.
• the Council liaised with the NHS which caused him to be discharged from services and he lost specialist treatments.
• the Council has not responded to the complaints he made to it.
• The Council failed to meet his care and support needs.
2. Mr X says that the Council’s actions have caused him distress and his health has deteriorated significantly; he has lost earnings and cannot work; he has lost access to medical treatment; and supervision of his medication review was impacted. Mr X has had to rely on significant care from his family and friends.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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 significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. If we are satisfied with an organisation’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

5. I considered the information provided by Mr X and discussed the issues with him. I considered the information provided by the Council including its file documents. I also considered the law and guidance set out below. Both parties had the opportunity to comment on a draft of this statement. I considered all comments received before issuing this final decision.

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What I found

The law and guidance

Homelessness

6. Councils must complete an assessment if they are satisfied an applicant is homeless or threatened with homelessness. The Code of Guidance says, rather than advise the applicant to return when homelessness is more imminent, the housing authority may wish to accept a prevention duty and begin to take reasonable steps to prevent homelessness. Councils must notify the applicant of the assessment. Councils should work with applicants to identify practical and reasonable steps for the council and the applicant to take to help the applicant keep or secure suitable accommodation. These steps should be tailored to the household, and follow from the findings of the assessment, and must be provided to the applicant in writing as their personalised housing plan (PHP). (Housing Act 1996, section 189A and Homelessness Code of Guidance paragraphs 11.6 and 11.18)
7. If councils are satisfied applicants are threatened with homelessness and eligible for assistance, they must help the applicants to secure that accommodation does not stop being available for their occupation. These is called the prevention duty. In deciding what steps they are to take, councils must have regard to their assessments of the applicants’ cases. (Housing Act 1996, section 195)
8. Councils must take reasonable steps to help to secure suitable accommodation for any eligible homeless person. This is called the relief duty. When a council decides this duty has come to an end, it must notify the applicant in writing (Housing Act 1996, section 189B)
9. If a council is satisfied an applicant is homeless, eligible for assistance, and has a priority need the council has a duty to secure that accommodation is available for their occupation (unless it refers the application to another housing authority under section 198). But councils will not owe the main housing duty to applicants who have turned down a suitable final accommodation offer or a Housing Act Part 6 offer made during the relief stage, or if a council has given them notice under section 193B(2) due to their deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate. (Housing Act 1996, section 193 and Homelessness Code of Guidance 15.39)
10. Applicants may ask a council to provide accommodation pending the outcome of a review. Councils have a power, but not a duty, to accommodate certain applicants and members of their household. (Housing Act 1996, sections 188(3), 199A(6), 200(5))

Adult Social Care

11. Sections 9 and 10 of the Care Act 2014 require councils to carry out an assessment for any adult with an appearance of need for care and support. They must provide an assessment to everyone regardless of their finances or whether the council thinks the person has eligible needs. The assessment must be of the adult’s needs and how they impact on their wellbeing and the results they want to achieve. It must also involve the individual and where suitable their carer or any other person they might want involved.
12. Councils must carry out assessments over a suitable and reasonable timescale considering the urgency of needs and any variation in those needs. Councils should tell people when their assessment will take place and keep them informed throughout the assessment.
13. The Care Act 2014 gives councils a legal responsibility to provide a care and support plan (or a support plan for a carer). The care and support plan should consider what needs the person has, what they want to achieve, what they can do by themselves or with existing support and what care and support may be available in the local area. The support plan must include a personal budget, which is the money the council has worked out it will cost to arrange the necessary care and support for that person.

What happened

14. Mr X first approached the Council about his housing situation in April/ May 2022. The Council’s case notes say that it first met with Mr X at the beginning of June to assess his housing needs. It recorded that Mr X had received notice to leave his private lodgings, and that he has complex and significant mental health needs and had sent the Council supporting documentation about this. Mr X was living in the Council’s area but received specialist treatment in London.
15. On 9 June, the Council sent Mr X two letters. In one it accepted it owed Mr X a prevention duty and in the other it said it owed him a relief duty. It also sent him a PHP. The PHP lists his diagnoses but does not say how these impact on his housing needs. The Council told Mr X that it would contact supported housing providers to see if there was any space for him. Mr X had also applied separately to the Council’s housing register in April 2022. Mr X told the Council that any communal housing is not suitable for him due to his mental health needs, particularly around hygiene, personal care and laundry.
16. The Council’s homelessness team referred Mr X’s case to its adult social care for a care needs assessment.
17. At the end of June, the Council placed Mr X in interim accommodation in London. It notified Mr X of the offer in writing. Its letter said that if he did not feel the accommodation was suitable, he should let his housing officer know. Mr X tells me that his carer had taken him to the Council office that day and he waited all day for the offer of interim accommodation. He only had a few minutes to consider the offer. The Council says Mr X had a room and his own kitchen and bathroom facilities. Mr X says that the kitchen was shared (as he only had access to a microwave in his room) and the exterior front door would not lock properly. He did not have access to his regular carers who would need to travel two hours to his current property. Mr X told the Council that this meant he could not leave the property, get to the shops or eat. He also could not access his specialist therapy as he would need to use public transport, and the carer who would usually meet him in London to take him there, but this was not possible from Mr X’s new location. The Council said that Mr X had not told it he needed carers, but Mr X said that it had not asked him about this and also his carers had contacted the Council on his behalf. Mr X says that he had to increase his medication to try to cope with his deteriorating health.
18. The Council has acknowledged that it did not consider the suitability of the interim accommodation when it placed Mr X there.
19. The Council’s case notes say that it reviewed whether the property was suitable. It clarified with the property agents that this was a self-contained unit so that Mr X did not have to share kitchen or bathroom facilities. It also decided that what Mr X had told them did not match up to his care needs and so the accommodation was suitable.
20. Mr X continued to email his case worker. He says the case worker was not addressing his issues. The Council said that it would review all the medical information again and whether the property was suitable.
21. Mr X reported a flood at the property and an ongoing leak as well as other repair issues. By August, Mr X had also reported a rat infestation and that the front door had been forced and was not secure.
22. Also in August, the Council’s Adult Care Services recorded the referral to assess Mr X’s care needs. It noted that he has a support worker and needs to access therapy in London. It liaised with the homelessness service and with Mr X and tried to arrange an advocate for him to help him with the assessment and care planning process. Mr X told the Council that he needed help with his shopping and his mental health was deteriorating. His mother was supporting him as his carer, but she could not do this well from such a distance.
23. In mid-August, the Council moved Mr X to a different property. This was still interim accommodation. The Council’s case notes show that before it offered Mr X this property, it asked the landlord for clarification on the facilities and also the state of repair. It noted that Mr X’s health meant that he would not be able to deal with any problems at this property.
24. However, Mr X complained that once again the front door did not lock. He said that he had to share a kitchen in this property too as again there were limited cooking facilities in his room. Mr X told the Council that he had been forced to take time off work and he had not been able to take his medication.
25. A few days later, Mr X had a mental health crisis and the Council was part of a professionals’ meeting. The Council checked that it had referred Mr X for a social care needs assessment and shared that it was seeking to move him back to Milton Keynes once a suitable property became available.
26. In September, the Council told Mr X it was still trying to arrange his social care needs assessment. He told the Council he was spending money on food deliveries because he could not use the shops and he was getting into debt. He had a new psychiatrist who had increased his medication but this was impacting on his ability to work.
27. On 7 October, the Council notified Mr X that it owed him the main housing duty.
28. By October, Mr X was assessed by the mental health crisis team. They advised that Mr X’s interim accommodation was making his health worse and triggering a crisis, and that he cannot engage with therapy as he cannot travel there. The Council contacted his carer to ascertain how Mr X’s health needs impacted on his housing need. He told the Council he had lost his job.
29. On 27 October, the Council started its assessment of Mr X’s care needs, meeting with him virtually. It told Mr X it would contact him about this
30. On 1 November, the Council verbally offered Mr X a self-contained flat in its area on a permanent tenancy. It confirmed the offer formally on 27 November and Mr X moved to the property on 6 December 2022. The Council agreed to pay rent in advance to the housing association. Mr X says the Council told him and the housing association that it had made the payment. Mr X has told me that the Council did not make the payment until November 2023. He says this delay caused him severe anxiety and led to the breakdown of his relationship with the housing association.
31. Mr X complained to the Council on 1 December. He said that the Council had allocated him unsuitable interim accommodation and the Council had not made sure that he could get his health needs met there. He said this had a serious impact on his mental health, he could not work, he could not access his medical appointments or therapy, and as a result his medication increased and the NHS decided he could not carry on with therapy at that time.
32. The Council’s files note a response, but I cannot tell if it sent the response to Mr X. The note says:
• that it allocated him property in London as this was the only accommodation it had available. He had the right to a formal review but he did not submit a review request, and it would have considered this review within 21 days of the Council accepting a full housing duty.
• The property had the required gas and electricity certificates.
• It had telephoned him several times regarding his difficulties but he had not responded.
• He could ask the Council to escalate his complaint to stage two of its process.
33. Mr X says that he did not receive this response and so he believed this stage one of the complaints process was ongoing. Mr X says that the properties were not properly registered for a house in multiple occupation, and he had not missed any calls from the Council.
34. Mr X also made a subject access request (SAR) to get the Council’s records on his housing and social care files. Mr X continued to chase the Council for a response to his complaint and to his subject access request.
35. In February 2023, the Council’s adult care team reviewed the file. It had not completed the assessment and it decided that as Mr X had moved again and was living locally, it would need to review his care needs. It is not clear whether the Council sent any assessment it had done so far to Mr X or sought his views on this. It had not offered to plan any care or support for him.
36. In May, the Council met with Mr X to review its assessment of his care needs. It found that:
• he continued to struggle to access amenities outside the home without support and guidance. Mr X was anxious to use public transport alone, and he feels threatened and unsafe.
• Mr X finds it hard to form and maintain relationships and to access his medical appointments without support.
• Mr X would benefit from a short period of community support to explore how he could access the community and his medical appointments and to explore transport options.
37. However, Mr X says the Council did not offer any support. In May 2023, Mr X complained to the Ombudsman. We asked the Council if Mr X had completed its complaints process. It told us that it had an open complaint at stage two of its process. We asked the Council to respond to Mr X’s complaint and Mr X also continued to chase the Council for a response.
38. The Council told Mr X on 24 May that it was still working on his SAR and that it was prioritising older requests ahead of his. It told him that he could also escalate this complaint to stage two of the Council’s process. The Council responded to Mr X’s SAR in August 2023.
39. The Council still had not responded to Mr X’s complaint about how it handled his housing situation. We chased the Council for a response on 26 July and 3 August but it did not reply. We commenced our investigation in September 2023. The Council at that time, still had not responded to Mr X’s complaint.
40. The Council says that it did not reply to Mr X’s complaint due to staffing problems. It says it is due to restructure its Housing Solutions service, including its complaint handling. The Council has agreed with the Ombudsman’s recommendation on a separate complaint to improve its complaint handling. The Council says it has improved its monitoring of the progress of complaints and this is now done by the Head of Service. The Council has given me details of its complaints data and this suggests that there are less complaints that take longer than 20 working days to decide. The Councill has also revised its temporary accommodation policy.
41. The Council has not progressed Mr X’s social care and support. It has not shared the new assessment with Mr X or sought his views on this. Its files say that a manager monitored the file in August and September. The manager said that the failure to progress Mr X’s care and support was unacceptable. The manager noted both times that the Council should review the situation with Mr X to check whether he had any unmet needs.

Analysis

42. The Council’s assessment of Mr X’s homelessness application in June 2022 does not fully address his needs, particularly how housing impacts on his mental illness. It did not assess his support needs, whether he has carers, nor how accesses his medical appointments. Mr X gave the Council proof of his diagnoses and shared information about his needs, but the Council did not consider this information in any detail. In short, it did not have a proper understanding of Mr X’s housing needs from the start.
43. The PHP referred to Mr X’s diagnoses but the Council missed the opportunity to agree with him how these impact on his housing needs.
44. The Council sent him two letters accepting the prevention duty and relief duty on the same day. This is likely to have caused confusion as to what support Mr X could expect and the overall plan for his housing situation.
45. The Council did not properly consider whether Mr X’s interim accommodation was suitable. The Council says that it had considered that Mr X could not share accommodation when it moved him to interim accommodation in London. The Council says Mr X had his own kitchen facilities, but Mr X says the facilities in his room were very limited and the kitchen was shared. Mr X had his own bathroom. However, Mr X had shared that he could not use communal laundry facilities due to how often he would use these and the Council did not consider this and how the need for easily accessible laundry could be met.
46. More importantly the Council failed to consider how Mr X would receive care and support in the interim accommodation (at that point on an informal basis) and how Mr X could access specialist therapy and essentials such as food shopping without support.
47. The Council’s notes say that when Mr X contacted it about the problems in interim accommodation, it reviewed whether this was suitable. However, the review was inadequate. The Council simply relied on the provider’s account that Mr X had his own kitchen and bathroom facilities. It said that what he had said about how the lack of care and support and the difficulties in getting to his therapy did not ‘match up to his care needs’. But at that time, the Council did not have a full understanding of Mr X’s care needs and had not assessed these. It did not properly engage with Mr X as to what the issues were so that it could properly decide whether the accommodation was suitable.
48. The Council took more care when it allocated the second interim accommodation. However, it still did not address his care needs and how he would access his therapy and other essentials. There were also significant security concerns with both properties which again should have called into question whether they were suitable for such a vulnerable person.
49. The Council took too long to pay the agreed rent in advance when Mr X moved to permanent accommodation, and its communication with Mr X about this was confusing.
50. The impact of the housing situation on Mr X was compounded by the Council’s failure to complete an assessment of his care needs in good time. This was fault. Its homelessness service said that it referred Mr X to the adult social care service in June 2022. The Council took until October to start his assessment, but there is no indication that it did anything more to complete the assessment until February 2023 by which time, Mr X had moved back to the area. The Council decided to review the assessment it had done so far, but again there was no work on this at all until May. The Council suggested that Mr X might need some support but failed to agree a care and support plan with him or make any more progress.
51. There is no monitoring on the file until August 2023 and although the manager notes that action is needed urgently, there is no progress. Again, the lack of effective monitoring is fault by the Council.
52. We cannot say what care Mr X would have received had the Council not delayed. However, the summary of the assessment the Council completed in May 2023 suggests that Mr X has unmet need to access the community, and with support around his medical appointments. The assessment suggested short term help but this is not to say that care would not have continued in some form. I note that Mr X has a long-term award of a disability benefit based on his needs.
53. The Council’s delay in assessing and its failure to put a care and support plan in place, caused Mr X distress, and significantly, has left him uncertain that had this support been in place he might have been able to cope better with the interim accommodation, and access his medical treatment.
54. Had the Council properly assessed and understood Mr X’s care and support needs, it is unlikely that it would have moved him to that interim accommodation without support. The move meant that Mr X was not receiving the care he needs, and health professionals have confirmed that the lack of care and his inability to access his therapy meant that his mental health deteriorated.
55. This was an inevitably stressful time, but Mr X also had difficulty attending therapy due to the unsuitability of the accommodation. We cannot say the Council’s actions caused his therapy to be terminated, this was a clinical decision and it may have happened even if the property was entirely suitable.
56. There is significant fault with the Council’s complaint handling. It did not address Mr X’s complaint at all. It failed to keep in touch with him about this. It has sent me notes that suggest it formed a response but it is not clear that it sent this to Mr X. In any case, the Council here mistakenly refers to review rights that are not applicable to interim accommodation, it mentions irrelevant factors, and says it had attempted to contact Mr X when there was no record of this.
57. The Council also told Mr X that it would close his complaint because he had moved from the interim accommodation. Complaints are often historic by nature: the person is complaining about something that has happened in the past. The fact that the situation has changed or improved, is not a reason to close a complaint. To do so risks leaving injustice unremedied.
58. Lastly, the Council also failed to respond to our office when we asked it for details of how the complaint was progressing.
59. The Council’s poor complaint handling caused Mr X distress and frustration and put him to unnecessary time and trouble trying to get his situation resolved.

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Agreed action

60. The Council has agreed to improve its corporate complaints handling as part of a separate Ombudsman investigation and we are monitoring its compliance with this agreed remedy.
61. When we have evidence of fault causing injustice, we will seek a remedy for that injustice which aims to put the complainant back in the position they would have been in if nothing had gone wrong. When this is not possible, we will normally consider asking for a symbolic payment to acknowledge the avoidable distress caused. But our remedies are not intended to be punitive and we do not award compensation in the way that a court might. Nor do we calculate a financial remedy based on what the cost of the service would have been to the provider. This is because it is not possible to now provide the services missed out on.
62. The Council will within one month of this decision:
• Apologise to Mr X for the fault identified. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The organisation should consider this guidance in making the apology.
• Complete any further assessment of Mr X’s care needs and agree with him his care and support plan;
• Pay to Mr X £750 in recognition of the distress caused to him when it failed to assess his housing needs and make sure that the interim accommodation was suitable (June to November 2022 representing £150 pcm);
• Pay to Mr X £500 in recognition of the distress and uncertainty caused to him when it failed to assess his social care needs;
• Pay to Mr X £500 in recognition of the time and trouble the Council put him to when it failed to respond to his complaint to it; and
• Share this decision with relevant staff.
63. The Council will within three months of the date of this decision:
• Review the current policy for allocation and monitoring of social care assessment. If service improvements are needed, form a clear action plan. The Council should share the outcome of the review and any action plan with the Ombudsman.
64. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

65. I have completed my investigation. There was fault by the Council causing Mr X injustice.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman