Case Ref: 24 009 667 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council has agreed to remind staff in its homelessness/housing review team to ensure that extensions to deadlines for review requests are agreed with the applicant and confirmed in writing.

Case Ref: 24 008 841 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will review its process for ending the prevention duty to ensure it always sends a decision with the advice on the right to ask for a review.

Case Ref: 24 000 718 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• Remind officers in writing of the importance of discussing issues with interim accommodation with residents before a decision is made ending the interim duty.
• Remind officers in writing of the importance of noting the thinking behind decisions made.

Case Ref: 24 000 426 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• Provide a quarterly report to the relevant committee or cabinet member on the Council’s progress in reducing the delays in considering the main housing duty and brining its case completion times within the required timescales. This is to ensure the Council maintains progress and to ensure democratic oversight.
• Provide evidence of the Council’s new process to assess the suitability of interim and temporary accommodation.

Case Ref: 23 014 985 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• •by training or other means remind staff of the importance of record keeping and providing applicants who bid for properties with clear and updated information about the Council’s bidding and selection processes. This must also be done in a timely manner
• •remind relevant staff of the importance of adhering to the Council’s complaint policy timescales and to ensure the Council’s responses address applicants’ complaints.
• •produce a factsheet which explains the Council’s process from shortlist to property offer, this should also include viewings and timescales in which applicants must accept offers. The Council should then ensure it provides all shortlisted housing applicants with the factsheet which gives them a clear understanding of the process.

Case Ref: 22 015 527 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will review how long its homelessness service is taking to determine homelessness applications and decide whether any action is necessary to improve performance. It should also consider whether there needs to be checks in place to ensure there is not the drift in deciding applications that happened here.
• The Council will review the approach it takes when a homelessness applicant is facing eviction and the point at which it will offer accommodation.

Case Ref: 22 013 242 Category: Environment and regulation Sub Category: Refuse and recycling

• The Council has agreed to do a spot check on all of the recycling bins at the block of flats concerned, shortly after the recycling is collected. The Council has agreed to provide the Ombudsman with photographic, date-stamped evidence that all of the bins were fully and properly emptied. If the recycling bins have clearly not been fully and properly collected, the Council has agreed it will tell the Ombudsman what it plans to do to rectify this situation.
• The Council has agreed to remind all relevant staff in the departments involved here that they are to respond to complaints in line with its complaints procedure.

Case Ref: 22 012 408 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council has agreed to confirm that the improvements to its annual review procedure includes guidance to schools in ensuring clarity in the annual review reports and quantifiable recommendations, based on the available evidence. - within one month

Case Ref: 22 010 276 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council will remind relevant officers of the need to share appropriate review rights with housing complainants. This will help to ensure people know of their right to request a suitability review of their current temporary accommodation.
• The Council will share the Ombudsman’s guidance on effective complaint handling with relevant officers so that complaints are handled in a clear, effective and timely manner. This will help to ensure that mistakes are apologised for and complainants know what to do if they remain unhappy.

Case Ref: 22 005 303 Category: Housing Sub Category: Other

• The Council will issue a briefing note to all housing staff, including managers, to remind them of the legal duties to protect someone's personal belongings regardless of whether or not it still owes a housing duty to that person. This briefing note should also remind staff of the Council’s policy on Discretionary Housing payments and how they can be used. The Council may wish to share this decision with all housing staff to illustrate the injustice that can be caused by failing to act in line with its duties, as well as what those duties are.