Summary: The Council housed Ms X and her two young children in unsuitable bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation or failed to book her any accommodation at all, for eleven months. Several times during this period, Ms X and her children were asked to leave the hotels with nowhere to stay. The Council’s records regarding what Ms X owes the Council for these periods in hotels are also unclear. In recognition of the Council’s poor record keeping, the Council has agreed to write off the arrears owed for the period Ms X was homeless due to fleeing domestic abuse. The Council has also agreed to pay Ms X £4,350 in recognition of the time she and the children spent in unsuitable accommodation and the frustration and distress caused by its poor communication.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council failed to provide adequate housing support to her and her children when she fled domestic abuse in April 2022.
2. Ms X says the Council failed to provide suitable interim accommodation, failed to arrange alternative accommodation once her hotel accommodation booking expired, failed to communicate with her properly, and charged her for accommodation that she was not occupying.
3. Ms X said the Council’s faults have caused her health to deteriorate and she and her children have been caused distress.

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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. Service failure can happen when an organisation fails to provide a service as it should have done because of circumstances outside its control. We do not need to show any blame, intent, flawed policy or process, or bad faith by an organisation to say service failure (fault) has occurred. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1), as amended)
6. 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

7. I considered the information provided by Ms X and the Council.
8. I considered the relevant law and guidance as set out below.
9. I considered our Guidance on Remedies.
10. I considered all comments made by Ms X and the Council on a draft decision before making a final decision.

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What I found

Law and guidance

Homelessness

11. Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 and the Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities (the Code) set out councils’ powers and duties to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness.

Prevention, relief and main housing duties

12. If a council is satisfied an applicant is threatened with homelessness and eligible for assistance, the council must help them to secure that accommodation does not stop being available for their occupation. This can include helping them remain in their property where it is reasonable for them to do so. In deciding what steps to take, councils must assess the applicants’ case and have regard to their needs. This is called the prevention duty and applies for a period of 56 days. (Housing Act 1996, section 195).

13. If a council is satisfied the applicant is homeless and eligible for assistance, it will owe a relief duty. This duty means a council must take reasonable steps to secure accommodation for any eligible homeless person. When a council decides the relief duty has come to an end (usually after 56 days), it must notify the applicant in writing. (Housing Act 1996, section 189B)

14. If homelessness is not successfully prevented or relieved, a council will owe a main housing duty to applicants who are eligible, have a priority need for accommodation and are not homeless intentionally.

15. The main housing duty means the council must secure suitable accommodation for the applicant, which may be social housing or private rented accommodation with a lease of at least 12 months. (Housing Act 1996, section 193 and Homelessness Code of Guidance 15.39)

Homelessness and domestic abuse

16. The Domestic Abuse Act received Royal Assent on 29 April 2021, at which point most of its provisions became law. A key provision for councils is that it changed the definition of “priority need” to include those seeking assistance with homelessness after fleeing domestic abuse. This part of the Act became law on 5 July 2021.

Bed and breakfast accommodation

17. Bed and breakfast accommodation is not suitable for households with ‘family commitments’. The Order defines this as a household that includes a dependent child or a pregnant woman. Where no other accommodation is available, the Council may place a family in bed and breakfast accommodation as a last resort but only for a maximum of six weeks. (The Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) Order 2003)

MARAC

18. A MARAC is a Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference where information is shared on high-risk domestic abuse cases. These are attended usually by local police, health, child protection, housing and domestic abuse support services. These meetings are held to safeguard adults experiencing domestic abuse.

What happened

19. Ms X has two young children. Last year, Ms X and her children fled her existing social tenancy (housing association) property to escape domestic abuse.
20. A few days after she fled, Ms X made a homelessness application to the Council by phone. The section of the form titled “what areas can the applicant reside in” was left blank by the caseworker. But it recorded the area she had fled from and later in the document it mentioned that she would be at risk in mostly North London and East London.
21. The next day, the Council carried out a suitability assessment of Ms X’s current accommodation – staying with a relative – and decided she was homeless, as she had fled domestic abuse and her relative did not have enough room to house her and the children. The Council told Ms X it owed her a relief duty.
22. Ms X told the Council in her communications she wanted to be moved to a particular borough as she had important family connections there and she had experienced a traumatic event and required support. The Council said it could not provide her with interim accommodation in that area as none was available.
23. Around a week later, the Council created a Personalised Housing Plan (PHP) with Ms X which said she was eligible for a three-bedroom property. It reiterated that she was owed a relief duty. In terms of steps she could take, it said she should explore a management transfer with her housing association.
24. The Council said its steps would be to help her secure suitable accommodation for at least six months, investigate whether it owed her a main housing duty and chase the progress of her management transfer with her housing association.
25. The housing association was not able to provide a management transfer and records from this time show the Council saying there was no interim accommodation in the areas of London that were safe for Ms X. Instead the Council booked her into a hotel in a neighbouring borough to where her relative lived.
26. Ms X left the hotel six days after she arrived. She told the Council it was unclean and too noisy and she did not want to stay in commercial hotels. She went to stay with her relative again and asked to be moved somewhere else. The Council did not book her any alternative accommodation.
27. Ms X next contacted the Council about her accommodation almost two months later, a few days after a MARAC meting heard her case. The MARAC decided she was at high risk of harm from the alleged perpetrator.
28. Ms X told the Council her children had been out of school since they fled because she was still living temporarily with her relative and her housing officer had not contacted her. For the next month, the Council said several times someone would call her back and no one did. Ms X chased this several times over three weeks.
29. The Council accepted a main housing duty to Ms X on 11 August 2022 and offered her a section 202 review of the suitability of her accommodation. Ms X did not request a review at that time. However the Council carried out a new suitability assessment of her accommodation on 26 August and decided that her continuing to stay with her family member was not suitable.
30. The Council did not review Ms X’s PHP again during the period I am investigating, including after it confirmed it owed her a main housing duty.
31. In the months following the Council accepting a main housing duty, the Council searched for alternative accommodation for Ms X and the children which was not commercial hotels. However in all instances the accommodation on offer was not suitable for Ms X’s needs.
32. The Council approached Ms X several times in this period to ask her to complete forms and to clear outstanding arrears relating to her stay at the hotel beginning in May. Ms X explained several times she left there after six days and the emails from this time show confusion between Council departments regarding how long she resided there.
33. On 5 October 2022, Ms X made a stage one complaint to the Council. She complained that:
• her housing officer’s communication with her had been poor;
• the initial B&B she was placed in when she became homeless in May was dirty and noisy, so she left shortly after to stay with her relative; and
• her relative cannot continue housing her and would be forcing her to leave at the end of the month.
34. The Council provided Ms X with more B&B accommodation in mid-October 2022. This was in another London borough that neighboured her relative. The exact start date for this accommodation is unclear from the records.
35. This hotel’s heating was not working and the family were staying there in winter. Ms X raised this with the Council and the Council reported it to the hotel but the issue was not fixed for several weeks.
36. On 19 October 2022 the Council responded at stage one of its complaints process. It apologised and said it was experiencing high levels of absence among its housing staff and would assign her a new housing officer. It offered Ms X £50 as a remedy.
37. Later in October Ms X’s new housing officer called her, several days later than agreed and after Ms X had chased this by phone several times. The housing officer said during the call they did not know what the call was regarding. The records show Ms X expressing frustration and distress due to this.
38. On 14 November 2022 Ms X raised a stage two complaint. She said the £50 offered was insufficient and her housing problems were still ongoing.
39. Later in November, eleven days before the hotel booking was due to expire, Ms X contacted the Council to ask where she and the children would go after that. No one returned her call. Ms X called again on 21 November. She said she and the children were being asked to leave the hotel that day and had nowhere to go.
40. Emails between council officers from this time show there being confusion about which hotel Ms X was booked into at that time.
41. The booking at the hotel was extended by the Council for a further two weeks. However by the end of the two weeks, on 7 December 2022, Ms X again had to contact the Council as she had no update on where they were moving to next.
42. The Council offered Ms X a hotel closer to her relative but Ms X misunderstood the location of the hotel, so she refused this, believing it was in an unsafe area. It was then no longer available.
43. The Council offered Ms X another hotel booking the same day. However Ms X said she could not go there, as the hotel was in another danger area and close to where she fled from. The records from this time show a lack of centralised, recorded information regarding Ms X’s danger areas, leading to confusion among officers booking her accommodation.
44. The Council did not offer Ms X any other accommodation. Ms X and the children had nowhere to sleep that night, so they returned to stay with her relative.
45. The next day, Ms X went in person to the Council’s housing department. She said she and the children had nowhere to stay and were left street homeless the night before. The Council booked Ms X another hotel but when they arrived, she realised the alleged perpetrator’s close friend lived on the same street. Ms X feared she and the children would be seen so they left the area and went back to the Council’s offices.
46. The Council officer that she spoke with said there was nowhere else for her to stay. They told her to either go back to the hotel in the unsafe area or make her own arrangements. Ms X went again to stay with her relative in the overcrowded accommodation.
47. A few days later the records suggest the Council booked Ms X into another hotel in a different part of London. However Ms X did not know the accommodation had been booked for her and the records do not show her being informed until much later. She continued to stay with her relative until early January 2023 when she was moved to another hotel.
48. Council officers continued to contact Ms X to try and establish what hotels she had stayed at and when, as its records were unclear and its finance department was seeking payment for outstanding arrears. Ms X continued to query the amount the Council was requesting for her as she said its dates were wrong.
49. In March 2023, the Council offered Ms X self-contained temporary accommodation in an outer London borough. It arranged removals services to move her belongings. She had concerns about the distance this put her from her relatives and support network, but she moved there on 17 March.
50. On 27 March the Council responded at the final stage of the complaints process.
51. It said:
• The housing officer that had not carried out any preparation ahead of calling Ms X apologised and acknowledged this made her feel scared and abandoned;
• It apologised for the lack of heating facilities at the B&B she stayed at in early to mid-November and the lack of response from the Council about this;
• It agreed that there had been “persistent delayed contact” by the Council’s housing team with Ms X and poor customer care and it apologised; and
• It said it had tasked someone with re-calculating Ms X’s arrears from when she was in B&B accommodation to ensure they reflect the correct dates.
52. In early May 2023 the Council discharged its main housing duty to Ms X by offering her a three-bedroom housing association property in a safe area. Ms X and her children moved in at the end of May 2023.
53. Ms X was unhappy with the Council’s complaint response and said it still had not provided her with an accurate figure for the arrears owed. Ms X complained to the Ombudsman. When Ms X approached the Ombudsman, she said not having a fixed address and frequently moving council areas for a year after she fled domestic abuse was particularly challenging, as it meant she could not access local domestic abuse support services.
54. We asked the Council to tell us what Ms X’s total arrears were from the accommodations she stayed in after fleeing domestic abuse. When it responded on 20 June 2023, the Council was not able to produce this information.
55. Since then the Council has re-calculated the arrears. It sent Ms X a request in August 2023 for a payment of £2,779.69 to cover the total amount of time she spent in interim and temporary accommodation. Much of this will be too late now for Ms X to claim retrospectively through housing benefit, which she was eligible to receive during this period.
56. Ms X said she needs support from the Council to access housing benefit to cover the arrears and still does not think the total sum the Council has given her is accurate.

My findings

Suitability of accommodation

57. The law says, as a family with children, Ms X should not have been in B&B accommodation for longer than six weeks. The Council also established several days after Ms X fled domestic abuse that her staying with her relative was unsuitable due to overcrowding and the relative refusing to house her. Therefore, the family should not have stayed in this accommodation for any length of time.
58. Instead when Ms X was homeless due to domestic abuse between May 2022 and March 2023, she and her young children were either placed in hotels across different London boroughs, with bookings only for several weeks at a time, or the Council arranged no accommodation and they stayed at her relative’s unsuitable, overcrowded property.
59. The use of B&B accommodation would have been acceptable for up to six weeks if there was no other option. Instead Ms X was in and out of this type of accommodation for 44 weeks. The Council failed to comply with its duty to provide suitable accommodation, in large part due to service failure (lack of available accommodation) but also due to poor communication by its housing staff and caseworkers allowing Ms X’s case to drift. The Council was at fault.
60. This fault caused Ms X and the children distress, frustration and uncertainty at an already upsetting time, negatively affected the children’s schooling and significantly delayed Ms X being able to access local domestic abuse support services at a time when these were much needed for her recovery.

Offered accommodation in unsafe areas

61. Several times in this period, the Council offered Ms X accommodation in areas which were unsafe for her and the children to go to. The Council kept poor centralised records regarding Ms X’s unsafe areas and failed to keep these under review, leading to this mistake happening several times. This was fault by the Council.
62. In several instances, the Council offered Ms X hotels in unsafe areas when her current hotel booking was already expired, meaning there was then minimal time to find Ms X a replacement hotel and she and the children were left without an agreed place to stay. Ms X and her children would have been street homeless in these instances had they not gone to stay with family.
63. In one instance, Ms X told the Council she and the children were at risk of being identified by a close friend of the alleged perpetrator at their hotel and the Council advised her to go back to that hotel if she could not make her own arrangements. This was extremely poor practice by the Council and was significant fault.
64. The Council failed to keep good records regarding Ms X’s safe areas - including through reviewing her PHP. It also failed to re-book accommodation for the family in a timely way. These faults caused significant uncertainty and distress to Ms X and her children.

Communication

65. The Council regularly failed to contact Ms X when it said it would, failed to keep a watching brief on her case after she became homeless, and several times failed to inform her of where she and the children were going to be staying.
66. The Council has accepted its communication with Ms X has been poor throughout this case and we agree with this. The Council’s poor communication caused Ms X to feel uncertain and distressed during an already unsettled period for the family.

Calculation of Ms X’s arrears

67. The Council’s records regarding where Ms X stayed and for how long, between May 2022 and March 2023 are poor. It was difficult to establish an evidenced timeline during my investigation and the case file suggests on several occasions that the hotels’ records did not correspond with those of the Council. Ms X has memory issues because of poor mental health - exacerbated by the events of last year - and has struggled to create a chronology of her stays herself.
68. Ms X was eligible for support with her housing costs from benefits during the period she was homeless. However backdated requests for housing benefits are time limited and the opportunity for Ms X to make a retrospective claim for her housing costs has now been lost.
69. As the Council was not able to provide Ms X with an accurate figure for any outstanding housing costs for 2022 until August 2023, and given the Council’s records regarding Ms X’s housing costs are not reliable, I do not consider that the Council is able to request these arrears from Ms X.

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Agreed action

70. Within one month of the date of the final decision, the Council has agreed to:
1. Apologise to Ms X for the distress, frustration and period in unsuitable accommodation that she and her children experienced due to the Council’s faults;
2. Pay Ms X £3,850 to recognise the period she and her family spent in unsuitable accommodation;
3. Due to its poor record keeping, write off the outstanding arrears that it says Ms X owes relating to any hotel accommodation she stayed in after becoming homeless and confirm this to Ms X in writing; and
4. Pay Ms X £500 in recognition of the frustration and distress caused by the Council’s poor communication. This should replace the £50 it has already offered Ms X, unless this has already been accepted by Ms X, in which case it can be deducted.
71. Within three months of the date of the final decision, the Council has agreed to:
1. Provide the Ombudsman with details of its plans, or steps it has already taken, to prevent homeless families being placed in commercial hotels beyond the six weeks allowed in law;
2. Show how it has improved its processes for recording applicants’ stays in interim and temporary accommodation so that any requests for payment can be made promptly and applicants are in time to make the necessary housing benefit applications;
3. Demonstrate that it has improved its processes for recording what areas are safe and unsafe for victims of domestic abuse to stay in, so that these records are centralised, clear and sufficiently detailed for the council officers using them;
4. Remind staff that PHPs should be kept under review, including when moving between duties, for instance from the relief duty to the main housing duty; and
5. Demonstrate that it has reminded all its housing staff that make contact with applicants who have experienced domestic abuse, that the Council is under no circumstances to advise victims of domestic abuse to stay in accommodation where they are likely to be in danger, regardless of the difficulties the Council is experiencing finding them accommodation.
72. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

73. I have completed my investigation. I have found fault leading to injustice and recommended an apology, a financial remedy and service improvements.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman