Case Ref: 24 022 774 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council will remind relevant staff of the need for accurate record keeping to ensure relevant documents are saved to pupils' files.
• The Council will provide the Ombudsman with evidence it has recruited permanent special educational needs staff members.
• The Council will provide the Ombudsman with evidence it has implemented a new customer standard that all communication is responded to within five working days.
• The Council will provide the Ombudsman with evidence it has improved its commissioning arrangements in relation to special educational needs.

Case Ref: 24 017 728 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council has agreed to provide training or guidance on remedying injustice to staff responsible for responding to complaints at both stages of the Council’s complaint process with reference to the Ombudsman’s Guidance on Remedies.

Case Ref: 24 015 858 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• the Council should:• issue guidance to officers in its homelessness department. The guidance should explain:- upon receipt of new and potentially relevant evidence, officers should promptly review any decision they have made about an applicant’s priority need, or any other part of the eligibility criteria for homelessness duties. They should make a clear record of their decision and the reasons for it; and- the legal basis of the ‘reason to believe’ threshold and what it means in practice.The Council should circulate a copy of this decision to officers as part of this guidance.

Case Ref: 24 015 455 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will share this decision with staff responsible for dealing with offers of interim accommodation to identify learning and prevent a recurrence of the fault we found.

Case Ref: 24 012 404 Category: Environment and regulation Sub Category: Antisocial behaviour

• The Council should send written reminders to relevant staff to signpost complainants to the anti-social behaviour case review process after a complainant has made a number of reports and continues to be dissatisfied with the outcome.

Case Ref: 24 008 966 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council will remind relevant members of staff that when they issue a decision on a person's housing application, they must include information on that person's right of review. This must happen regardless of whether the decision is included in the Council's complaint response.

Case Ref: 24 005 241 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council has agreed to review its procedures to ensure interim/emergency reviews of Education, Health and Care Plans are arranged in a timely manner when it is clear a placement is ending and a new placement is yet to be identified.
• The Council has agreed to review how it consulted schools to identify whether any lessons can be learned particularly in relation to the better targeting of consultations for a school place, following up responses to consultations and ensuring the reasons given for refusing a place are adequately provided.

Case Ref: 24 005 013 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council agreed to decide what changes are needed to its Education, Health, and Care (EHC) Plan processes, or staff training, to ensure it has systems in place to:ensure its staff are clear about its non-delegable duty to ensure EHC Plan provision is in place;check EHC Plan provision is in place when it issues a new or substantially different EHC Plan, and properly investigate complaints or concerns that provision is not in place at any time;ensure arrangements are clear for how support from therapy services will be provided where it maintains an EHC Plan for a child that attends a school in a different council’s area; andensure effective case management of EHC Plans when staff leave and are replaced, so statutory timescales are met and issues responded to in good time.

Case Ref: 23 020 264 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council has agreed to circulate our ‘Guide for Practitioners: Medical assessments for housing applications (July 2024)' to all staff involved in making decisions on medical priority;
• The Council has agreed to arrange a training session to those staff on the content of the guidance to ensure the Council:1. makes its own decisions on medical priority and does not simply adopt the medical adviser’s view;2. considers all the evidence submitted in reaching its decision; and3. provides clear reasons why a person does not qualify and why their evidence has been discounted.
• The Council has agreed to remind medical advisers that their role is to make a recommendation (not a decision) on medical priority based on the evidence provided with clear and relevant reasons.

Case Ref: 23 019 692 Category: Other Categories Sub Category: Leisure and culture

• The Council will review its Community Trigger procedure to ensure this is aligned with the relevant legislation and guidance.