London Borough of Croydon (19 009 457)

Statement Upheld Assessment and care plan 03-Jul-2020

Summary: Miss D complains through her sister Ms F about the way the Council assessed and met her care and support needs. The Ombudsman has found fault. The Council has agreed to apologise, review Miss D’s needs, and make a payment to Ms F.

London Borough of Croydon (17 016 273)

Statement Upheld Child protection 03-Jul-2020

Summary: Ms C says the Council was responsible for numerous failures related to an investigation into risk to her children. Primarily, she says social workers and others made unjustified allegations against her. She says she suffered injustice as a result because the Council made incorrect assumptions about her children and they did not receive the support they should have done. The Council complied with the statutory complaints procedure and commissioned an independent investigation and held a review which were fair and considered the relevant information. The Ombudsman cannot, therefore, reinvestigate. However, the Council did not respond adequately to the findings and recommendations of the investigation. It should apologise and pay Ms C a sum to recognise that fault.

London Borough of Croydon (19 011 481)

Statement Upheld Building control 15-Jul-2020

Summary: Mr B complains the Council’s building control officers gave contradictory and inconsistent advice. The Ombudsman finds no evidence of fault by the Council in this regard. There was some fault in the handling of the complaint leading to delay, for which an apology has been given, and the Council has agreed to identify and implement improvements in its complaint handling.

London Borough of Croydon (19 003 520)

Statement Upheld Planning applications 23-Jul-2020

Summary: Mr B complains about how the Council handled planning matters at a development next to his home. There was fault by the Council because it failed to properly address his complaints. The Council should apologise, review how it handles similar complaints, and share this decision with the relevant staff. It is not clear how the Council assessed one aspect of the development, but this will be resolved by it deciding a subsequent application to amend the planning permission.

London Borough of Croydon (19 015 502)

Statement Upheld Refuse and recycling 03-Aug-2020

Summary: The Ombudsman found fault by the Council on Mr S’s complaint of it failing to act effectively on reports of missed bin collections. The collection of missed waste was delayed. It failed to identify, and solve, the cause of missed collections promptly. It failed to monitor the problem and made errors when attempting to relocate parking bays. The agreed action remedies the injustice caused.

London Borough of Croydon (19 015 537)

Statement Upheld Assessment and care plan 21-Aug-2020

Summary: Ms Y complains the Council delayed in assessing her care and support needs following her discharge from hospital. Ms Y also says the Council did not consider her for reablement care and failed to backdate her direct payments to the correct date. The Ombudsman finds the Council included incorrect information in its assessment of Ms Y in June 2019 and then delayed in reviewing her needs thereafter. This meant that Ms Y went without the care she needed for longer than necessary, causing avoidable distress. The Council will apologise and pay £500 to Ms Y.

London Borough of Croydon (18 019 869)

Statement Upheld Residential care 08-Sep-2020

Summary: There was fault by the Council as it delayed responding to a query on a financial assessment. The Council’s apology and response to the query remedied the injustice caused. A Council officer’s use of informal language was inappropriate but not significant enough to be called '’fault’. There is insufficient evidence to show there was fault by the Council or the care home in relation to complaints that a residents’ room in a care home was cold.

London Borough of Croydon (19 016 048)

Statement Upheld Other 10-Sep-2020

Summary: The Council is at fault for failing to properly risk assess the use of a hot water tap in a community facility. Ms D was caused injury because of this failure. The Council has agreed to make a payment in recognition of the distress caused by the injury and the additional strain it placed on Ms D’s mother. It has also agreed to remind staff about the importance of completing risk assessments.

London Borough of Croydon (19 014 751)

Statement Upheld Disabled facilities grants 28-Oct-2020

Summary: Miss B complains about how the Council dealt with her application for a Disabled Facilities Grant. The Council did take her family’s views into account and progressed the application properly. It was late in making some payments to the builders. However, it has now made all the payments due and has apologised to Miss B for the late payments.

London Borough of Croydon (19 006 454)

Statement Upheld Allocations 30-Oct-2020

Summary: The Council acted with fault in its response to Miss X’s complaint on needing to move home due to risk of domestic violence. It apologised and provided Miss X with a financial remedy to acknowledge its delays. It also improved its services to allow Council staff access to housing records to reduce the risk of perpetrators being accommodated near domestic violence survivors. The Council provided an adequate remedy before the Ombudsman investigated.