Case Ref: 22 003 918 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council has agreed to share a copy of this decision with staff in the relevant departments.
• The Council has agreed to remind relevant staff about which Ombudsman to direct complainants to. It will provide training or guidance and amend any template letters or emails as appropriate.

Case Ref: 22 003 901 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will issue a memo to officers reminding them that where an applicant asks the Council to reconsider the suitability of their current temporary accommodation because of a change in circumstances, the decision must be put in in writing. This will allow the applicant to use the section 202 review procedure to challenge the Council’s decision if they disagree.

Case Ref: 22 002 937 Category: Environment and regulation Sub Category: Pollution

• The Council agreed to identify why there: were delays amounting to a total of 12 weeks with issuing a notice and telling the complainant what it had done; was a failure to provide regular updates. It will act to ensure these are not repeated on future cases.

Case Ref: 21 016 534 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will provide guidance or training to relevant staff to ensure they consider whether an applicant may be homeless when they report domestic abuse, record how they consider this, and issue decisions in writing in line with relevant law and guidance.

Case Ref: 21 012 875 Category: Children's care services Sub Category: Looked after children

• The Council will remind relevant officers that they should consider using discretion to investigate late complaints about issues which fall under the Children's statutory complaints procedure.

Case Ref: 21 011 712 Category: Environment and regulation Sub Category: Refuse and recycling

• Amend policy relating to rubbish left out early to rely on Section 33 of the Local Government Act, not Section 46A.
• Identify all parties who have been issued a Fixed Penalty Notice in the last 12 months and reassess these based on the new policy.

Case Ref: 21 011 508 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Assessment and care plan

• By training or other means, ensure officers make a person centred decision when offering reablement by consulting service users on a decision to provide reablement and ensuring specific needs are met by the reablement service.

Case Ref: 21 011 244 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council has agreed to:•by training or other means remind staff of the importance of using the correct words / terms when dealing with housing applications and communicating with applicants
• •review and ensure its housing allocation policy clearly confirms who and how housing transfer applications on welfare grounds will be dealt with.

Case Ref: 21 006 566 Category: Environment and regulation Sub Category: Antisocial behaviour

• The Council agreed to issue advice to all relevant staff on the importance of basic recordkeeping when investigating reports of noise nuisance or ASB; to include brief details of telephone calls and action being taken on cases;
• The Council agreed to issue advice to all relevant staff on where there might be instances where it can investigate or take action in respect of reports of shouting or raised voices if these are not reflective of ‘normal domestic use’ of dwellings.
• The Council agreed to complete a review of the information published on its website to provide a link from the page on noise nuisance to those dealing with anti social behaviour. It also agreed that information about anti social behaviour would include more information about its powers to tackle this and include a reference to the role of its Community Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conference (CMARAC).
• The Council agreed to review of its current arrangements for checking on the progress of open investigations into noise nuisance or anti social behaviour to ensure these did not drift; for example, producing reports for management review where there has been no action taken on a case for several weeks (we suggested 8 weeks as a benchmark).
• The Council agreed to review its procedure for following up when it had issued a reply to a complaint to ensure it takes the action promised in that reply. We advised it that complaint responses should ideally contain named points of contact for complainants with information about who will be responsible for taking action and by when.

Case Ref: 21 008 103 Category: Benefits and tax Sub Category: Other

• The Council will remind all officers to provide an explanation to people when there is a significant change to their council tax account. The Council will provide us with evidence it has done this.