Case Ref: 19 016 128 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will make changes (or advise the Ombudsman of any changes it has already made) to its procedures to ensure delays such as those found here do not occur in future.
• The Council will offer its staff refresher training so staff can properly consider if interim accommodation is suitable for the individual applicant’s needs and feel confident and supported to make decisions on priority need where this disagrees with the advice of its independent medical adviser;

Case Ref: 19 014 085 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council has agreed to remind its staff of the Council’s duty to provide information and advice on the rights of persons who are homeless or threatened with homelessness, and the duties of the authority.

Case Ref: 19 013 947 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council will review its assessment processes to ensure: it requests all the information it needs to consider an application at the earliest possible stage to avoid delays in the assessment process; it makes its own decision on medical priority, based on all available evidence, including its medical adviser's views; and it properly explains its reasons for deciding not to award medical priority.

Case Ref: 19 012 853 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council should: a) Complete a review of what happened in this case. The Council should address any learning points and provide a copy of the review to the Ombudsman and to Mrs X and Miss T.
• b) Provide training to the occupational health, CWD and Adult Social Care teams regarding transition between teams and effective coordinated planning for those with complex needs. The Council should provide evidence it has completed all of the above to the Ombudsman.

Case Ref: 19 012 831 Category: Environment and regulation Sub Category: Refuse and recycling

• The Council will monitor all the waste collections at the complainant's address and keep an accurate record detailing when collections were made, any problems found and the action taken to resolve them including dated timed photographic evidence of any issues that may arise.
• The Council will review its communications to ensure it is providing consistent information about the collection schedule for the complainant's road.
• The Council will review whether residents should be able to use the app to report missed waste collections and ensure it provides consistent advice about this in future. If the app can continue to be used, ensure these reports are properly recorded as missed collections and actioned accordingly.

Case Ref: 19 012 560 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council agreed to complete a review within 6 weeks which examines its failings to ensure they are not repeated in the future.
• The Council agreed to remind officers of the need to: properly consider whether they should offer interim accommodation; apply the correct threshold when considering applications; consider whether it was reasonable for her to occupy the accommodation she was staying in; carry out reviews of Personal Housing Plans; keep full records on cases; make their own enquiries on applications where an applicant is slow producing what is needed.

Case Ref: 19 010 312 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council agreed to review the way housing allocations and medical priority decision letters are produced to ensure decisions are clearly explained to applicants.

Case Ref: 17 012 634 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Assessment and care plan

• Within three months of our final decision, the Council should send evidence to the Ombudsmen of steps already taken, or a plan of action for changes, to prevent a recurrence of the faults we have identified.

Case Ref: 19 008 359 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Charging

• The Council will review its procedures for considering requests for DREs to ensure officers give adequate consideration to requests, including promptly seeking any additional information required, to avoid the delays experienced by Ms X. The Council should also ensure it keeps proper records of its decisions on DREs and reasons for those decisions. The Council should inform the Ombudsman of the action taken to improve its practice in this area.

Case Ref: 19 003 989 Category: Transport and highways Sub Category: Parking and other penalties

• The Council will issue a reminder to staff dealing with complaints to ensure complaints about the conduct of bailiff’s acting on the Council’s behalf are responded to under the Council’s complaint procedure.
• The Council will provide details of the date and content of the refresher training provided to the bailiff.
• The Council will review the training provided to bailiffs acting on its behalf about vulnerable debtors and reach a view if this is enough to ensure good practice and provide details of the review and outcome to the Ombudsman.