Case Ref: 23 020 047 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• Demonstrate how it will ensure that officers always carry out a suitability assessment to identify the household’s needs before making a placement in interim or temporary accommodation.
• fShow how it will monitor homelessness applications and set reminders of statutory deadlines e.g. 56 days, 8 weeks.

Case Ref: 23 019 748 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• Remind staff to ensure they carry out a suitability review of a person’s temporary accommodation when applicants or persons on their behalf raise concerns about the suitability of such accommodation.

Case Ref: 23 019 381 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Charging

• The Council has agreed to reviews its adult social care complaints procedure and take steps to ensure complaint responses are sent within the Council’s timescales. The Council should also ensure it has system in place to monitor complaints to identify if delays are likely to occur, to enable it to take action to minimise the delays and provide regular and meaningful updates to the complainant.

Case Ref: 23 018 625 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will issue a reminder to all relevant staff about the timescales to respond to section 202 review requests

Case Ref: 23 018 548 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• Establish a standardised policy between it, and all managing agents responsible for resolving disrepair. The policy should set out clear service level agreements for work to be completed and give the Council oversight over the presence of reported disrepair, and the completion of works. It is expected that such a policy would prevent similar occurrences where the Council has a lack of oversight over reported disrepair and can proactively take action to resolve any delay.

Case Ref: 23 017 860 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will provide an update to the Ombudsman on its progress against the Housing NeedsService Improvement Plan.

Case Ref: 23 017 447 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council will provide us with an explanation about how it will ensure that open cases will be reallocated and progressed following the departure of Environmental Health Officers.

Case Ref: 23 017 206 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will send a reminder to officers dealing with repair issues in interim and temporary accommodation about the need to promptly investigate any concerns about repair issues in the property and consider whether emergency rehousing is necessary.

Case Ref: 23 016 266 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will remind relevant officers and managers of its homelessness duties under the Housing Act 1996. This will help to ensure the Council provides temporary homeless accommodation which is free of disrepair and of the need to deal with any reported issues quickly and decisively in temporary accommodation the Council has organised under its duties.
• The Council will consider reviewing how it can improve its general oversight of the condition of temporary homeless accommodation it has organised under its homelessness duties in line with the Housing Act 1996. It will also remind relevant officers and managers of the need for the Council to inspect accommodation itself if there are persistent reports of disrepair issues. This will help to ensure the Council itself has a clear picture of accommodation it is placing homeless applicants into, rather than relying on information from third parties.
• The Council will remind relevant officers and managers of the need to complete non-statutory suitability reviews of its temporary homeless accommodation in no more than eight weeks (to mirror the timescale for statutory reviews under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996). This will help to ensure those living in temporary homeless accommodation are not left waiting for the Council to decide whether it views the accommodation as suitable or not.
• The Council will review the wording on its informal suitability reviews of temporary homeless accommodation it has organised. It will review this to make it clearer about the next available steps to the applicant when it has completed its initial informal review. This will help to ensure those in temporary accommodation have a clear understanding that there is the option of a formal suitability review under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996, after the Council’s initial informal review has taken place.
• The Council will share the Ombudsman’s focus report - unsuitable temporary accommodation: guide for practitioners (issued May 2023) with relevant staff, managers and directors. This will help to ensure relevant staff have a clear understanding of their duties to those applicants in line with the Housing Act 1996.

Case Ref: 23 016 151 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council agreed to consider reviewing its emergency panel decision review process to allow emergency housing transfer requests by email rather than by writing to a PO Box address.