The Council has agreed to remind officers of the need to fully explore local connections and an individual’s circumstances in reaching a decision on their homelessness application, and to action requests for a review of their decisions.The Council has agreed to review its procedures to ensure there are no significant delays in reaching decisions on housing register applications.

The Council agreed to review the the information and guidance it provides to applicants and medical professionals about evidence for housing applications. It should ensure that the information does not discourage applicants and professionals from providing relevant information about the effects of health problems or disabilities for professionals who know them well.The Council agreed to review the requirements it places on its medical advisers to ensure the advice provided for housing allocation priority contains sufficient explanation of how the recommendation was reached to allow housing staff to fully understand the advice and make their own decision about priority.The Council agreed to remind its housing allocations staff that: all decisions about medical priority should be made by the Council, not by the Council's medical advisers; and while they can take into account any recommendations made by the Council's medical advisers, they should not give this any special weight, must also take into account all evidence provided by applicants and resolve any conflicts of evidence (including with the medical adviser’s recommendation) when making decisions.The Council agreed to review the resources it assigns to its housing allocations team to ensure it has sufficient staff to respond to applications and queries from applicants within a reasonable period of time.

The Council has agreed it will ensure it has a process to identify and review cases where a decision on whether it owes the full housing duty are outstanding for more than three months to include management oversight and the encouragement of action plans to resolve whatever outstanding inquiries are delaying such a decision. This is to avoid lengthy delays, well in excess of Government guidance, in completing inquiries into whether it owes such a duty.The Council agreed to ensure it has a process to cover cases where homeless households are in need of a change of emergency or temporary accommodation because of its unsuitability. While the Council will face shortages of supply and budgetary pressures it should still be seeking to meet its statutory duties and have a way of systematically prioritising and reviewing such cases. This is to ensure there is not drift once it has identified a need to change such accommodation.The Council agreed to ensure that it had a process to identify complaints made about its housing services that have exceeded timescales for a reply under its corporate complaints procedure. This should include identifying who has oversight of such cases and ways for escalating concerns about non-response to senior managers. This followed a failure by the Council to reply to a complaint in this case for over eight months.

the Council has agreed to:review its guidance to staff on handling complaints where the complainant is accessing the legal protocol for housing disrepair claims. The Council should make sure it is clear to staff when complaints about homelessness applications and housing register applications, including requests by Council tenants to move to different accommodation, should be treated as separable from the legal protocolthe Council has agreed to:circulate a reminder to relevant staff that requests by Council tenants to transfer to different accommodation should be forwarded to its Housing Register and Advice Team. This should include details of the circumstances when such a request should be promptly forwarded to its Housing Register and Advice Team for a decision on whether it qualifies as an “essential decant request” under the Council’s housing allocations schemethe Council has agreed to:share this decision with relevant staff members.

The Council will review its policy and processes in relation to the provision of bed and breakfast accommodation to families and pregnant applicants to ensure its approach is in line with the law, and provide guidance to relevant staff.The Council will compolete the devlopment of its Temporary and Emergency Accommodation Strategy and report to us on progress made in increasing the supply of temporary accommodation, particularly for families who would otherwise be in bed and breakfast accommodation.The Council will rveiew its complaints process to ensure that a manger is responsible for ensuring a complaint reponse is sent where input is needed from more than one team, and that reqests for legal or other advice are followed up to ensure that complaint responses are issued within the timescales set out in its complaints policy.