Summary: Ms C complained the Council did not stop her family being evicted from their home, did not provide suitable interim accommodation, and delayed providing storage for their belongings. The Council was at fault for raising Ms C’s expectations that it would pay her rent arrears and for failing to assess the suitability of her interim accommodation. The Council has agreed to take to remedy this injustice.

The complaint

1. Ms C complained the Council did not stop her family being evicted from their home, did not provide suitable interim accommodation and delayed providing storage for their belongings. Ms C says living in unsuitable accommodation has been detrimental to her mental health and her son’s behaviour.
2. Ms C also complained about the Council’s decision she and her family are intentionally homeless.

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What I have investigated

3. I have investigated Ms C’s complaint that the Council did not stop her family from being evicted from their home, did not provide suitable interim accommodation, and delayed providing storage for their belongings. I considered the actions of the Council between November 2018 and December 2019.
4. I have not investigated Ms C’s complaint about the Council’s decision she and her family are intentionally homeless because Ms C can request a review.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

5. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
6. We cannot question whether a council’s decision is right or wrong simply because the complainant disagrees with it. We must consider whether there was fault in the way the decision was reached. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
7. If we are satisfied with a council’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered:
• Ms C’s complaint and the information she provided;
• documents supplied by the Council;
• relevant legislation and guidelines; and
• the Council’s policies and procedures.
9. Ms C and the Council had the opportunity to comment on a draft decision.

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What I found

Legislation and guidance

10. Councils owe certain duties to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Councils must arrange accommodation when they have reason to believe an applicant may be eligible, homeless and in priority need. A household with dependent children is classed as having a priority need.
11. The law says councils must ensure all accommodation it arranges for homeless applicants is suitable for the needs of the applicant and members of his or her household. This duty applies to interim accommodation and accommodation provided under the main housing duty.  (Housing Act 1996, s. 206)
12. B&B accommodation is not to be regarded as suitable for an applicant with family commitments. “B&B accommodation” does not include accommodation which is owned or managed by a council as defined in section 180(3) of the Housing Act 1996.
13. A council must have an allocation scheme for deciding priorities and allocating accommodation. The scheme must give reasonable preference to applicants who fall within reasonable preference categories. (Housing Act, 1996 s.166A (1,3) and s.167 (1, 2))
14. The Housing Act 1996 section 166A sets out the reasonable preference categories. These are:
• people who are homeless and eligible under the Housing Acts 1985 and 1996
• people occupying insanitary or overcrowded housing or living in unsatisfactory housing conditions
• people who need to move on medical or welfare grounds
• people who need to move to a particular locality and a failure to move would cause hardship to themselves or to others
15. A council may give 'additional preference' to applicants within the reasonable preference categories, provided they have urgent housing needs.
16. The room standard says the lowest number of bedrooms needed for a couple with two children of the same sex is two. (Housing Act 1985, s.325 (1,2))
17. Applicants have a right to ask for a review of a council’s decision about the number of points they have been awarded. (Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (2012) Allocation of accommodation: guidance for local housing authorities in England)

What happened

18. This chronology includes key events in this case and does not cover everything that happened.
19. Ms C is married and has two sons. One of her sons has learning needs and an education, health and care plan.
20. In November 2015 Ms C moved into property A. Property A was temporary accommodation provided by the Council. The property was rented to Ms C by a housing association. The housing association managed the property and was responsible for collecting the rent. Ms C claimed housing benefit. In November 2018, the housing association sent Ms C a notice of eviction for rent arrears.
21. Ms C met with the Council’s housing needs team. She showed the Council her notice of eviction and explained the rent arrears were accrued when she went abroad for a funeral and her benefits were cancelled. Ms C explained her husband and two children remained in the property when she was abroad, but her husband had no recourse to public funds.
22. The housing needs team made an application to the homelessness prevention fund in December 2018 to pay off Ms C’s arrears to stop the eviction. The Council told Ms C’s housing association it would pay her arrears. The housing association cancelled Ms C’s eviction.
23. The Council tried to contact Ms C to tell her to apply for a discretionary housing payment. It also left her messages to arrange an appointment to review her personalised housing plan. Ms C did not respond to these messages.
24. When the Council spoke to Ms C’s housing association to arrange pay off her arrears, it found out that they had increased, and she had not applied for a discretionary housing payment. The Council tried to contact Ms C to discuss her case but could not get hold of her. The Council decided Ms C was not eligible for the homelessness prevention fund because she was not owed a duty under the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. The Council also noted that she had continued to accrue rent arrears and had not made a discretionary housing payment application.
25. In January, February and March 2019, Ms C received backdated housing benefit which paid off some of her arrears but left over £2,500. The housing association decided that even with the backdated housing benefit her rent arrears were unacceptably high and issued her with a notice of eviction in March 2019.
26. Ms C contacted the Council in March 2019 because her housing association had reinstated her eviction. The Council told Ms C to apply for a discretionary housing payment to clear some of her arrears and sent Ms C a mitigating circumstances form to complete.
27. Ms C attended an emergency appointment with the Council in April 2019. She said she did not receive the mitigating circumstances form. The Council gave Ms C a copy of the form which she said she would complete; Ms C did not return the form. The Council told Ms C to come to the Council on the day of her eviction and gave her a storage request form to complete.
28. Ms C and her family were evicted from property A in April 2019. The Council placed Ms C and her family in interim accommodation. This accommodation was a room in a Council owned hostel, property B. The Council wrote to Ms C to tell her its prevention duty had ended because she had become homeless.
29. In June 2019, Ms C asked the Council to review the suitability of property B. The Council told Ms C the accommodation was considered suitable when it was offered to her. Ms C’s solicitor asked the Council to review the suitability of property B. The Council refused.
30. The Council wrote to Ms C to tell her it had found her intentionally homeless and its duty to provide her with accommodation had ended. The Council explained its decision, the information it considered and how Ms C could ask for a review. Ms C asked the Council to review its decision.
31. The housing association gave Ms C notice that it would destroy the belongings she had left in property A when she was evicted. The Council first told Ms C it would not house her family’s belongings. However, it reviewed its decision and agreed to store Ms C’s belongings while it reviewed its decision to end its housing duty.
32. The Council overturned its decision in August 2019 and confirmed it owed Ms C the main housing duty under section 193 of the Housing Act 1996. The Council does not have a record of its decision making. It told Ms C it could end its housing duty if she refused an offer of temporary accommodation, a 12-month fixed term assured shorthold tenancy from an approved private landlord or social housing from the housing register.
33. The Council added Ms C and her family to its housing register. It assessed the family needed a two-bedroom property and were in band B for their housing priority. The Council auto-bid for Ms C and offered her a property in August 2019. Ms C told the Council she did not want the property and did not want it to auto-bid for her. The Council said she could bid herself for two months and then it would reactivate auto-bidding.
34. In September 2019, Ms C asked the Council to review her housing priority and provided supporting evidence. The Council reassessed the family and found they did not qualify for any extra priority. It wrote to Ms C and explained the criteria that had to be met for someone to be given band A medical priority and, with reference to the new information Ms C had provided, why it had awarded the correct priority, band B. The Council told Ms C how she could challenge the decision by judicial review if she remained dissatisfied.
35. The Council offered Ms C a second property from its housing register in October 2019. Ms C declined the property because she was waiting for a decision on her housing priority appeal.
36. In November 2019, Ms C’s solicitor asked the Council to review Ms C’s housing priority again. The solicitor also asked the Council to consider the family for a three-bedroom rather than a two-bedroom property because Ms C’s son needed his own room. The Council agreed to review its decision.
37. The Council reactivated auto-bidding on Ms C’s account because she had not bid regularly for properties. It offered her a third property in November 2019 which she declined. The Council offered her another property in December 2019, but she did not respond to the offer.
38. The Council wrote to Ms C in December 2019 with the result of her housing priority review. The Council explained a medical adviser had reviewed her request for an extra bedroom who, after reviewing the evidence, decided an extra bedroom was not essential. The medical adviser said Ms C’s son could reasonably be expected to share a room with his sibling and the Council agreed. The Council explained Ms C could challenge this decision by judicial review.

Analysis

39. The Council did not have any duty to provide Ms C with services under the Homeless Reduction Act 2017 because she made a homelessness application before the introduction of this Act and the Council had not discharged it duty. There appears to have been some confusion by the Council about whether it had a duty to Ms C and her family under this Act. However, this confusion did not cause Ms C and her family an injustice as the Homeless Reduction Act 2017 affords people greater protection than the Housing Act 1996.
40. Ms C complains the Council did not stop her family from being evicted from their home. It was the housing association’s decision to evicted Ms C and her family, not the Council’s. The Council offered Ms C advice and guidance. It told her to make a discretionary housing payment application and to give details of any mitigating circumstances. It also tried to meet with Ms C to discuss her case. It was Ms C’s choice whether to engage with this support.
41. The Council told Ms C it would apply to the homelessness prevention fund to pay her arrears. When the Council went to make an application, it found Ms C was not eligible for financial support through this fund. The Council told Ms C it would pay her arrears, but this was not the case. Giving Ms C misleading information was fault and raised her expectations.
42. When Ms C and her family became homeless, the Council placed them in Council-owned interim accommodation. Ms C asked the Council to consider the suitability of the accommodation in June 2019. The Council told Ms C the accommodation was considered suitable when it was offered however, it has not provided any evidence of this. The Council should have assessed whether property B was suitable for each member of the household and its case records should have demonstrated that it took the statutory requirements into account. Failure to assess the suitability of the interim accommodation for each family member was fault. As a result of this fault, there is uncertainty about whether the interim accommodation provided by the Council was suitable. The injustice caused by this fault was experienced by the family between June 2019 and the date the Council offered them alternative accommodation, August 2019.
43. The Council offered Ms C four two-bedroom properties between August and December 2019. Ms C did not accept these offers because they were for two-bedroom properties and she believes her family need a three-bedroom property. The Council assessed the family as eligible for a two-bedroom property and there was no fault in how the Council made or reviewed its decision. Where there is no fault in the way a Council makes a decision, I cannot question the merits of the decision.
44. At first the Council said it would not store Ms C’s belongings. However, when the housing association told Ms C it would destroy the items she had left in property A, the Council agreed to store her belongings while it reviewed its decision to end its housing duty. The Council fulfilled its duty under the Housing Act 1996 to protect the property of homeless people.

Agreed action

45. Within one month of the final decision, the Council will:
• Apologise to Ms C for the faults identified.
• Pay Ms C £200 for avoidable distress caused by the raised expectation the Council would pay her arrears and the uncertainty about whether the interim accommodation provided by the Council was suitable for her family.
46. Within two months of the final decision, the Council will:
• Review its case management systems to ensure it is clearly recorded whether an individual is eligible for support under the Homeless Reduction Act 2017.
• Remind staff of their duties to assess the suitability of interim accommodation for everyone in the household.
• Review its procedure for record keeping to ensure details are kept of its decision making.
47. The Council should provide the Ombudsman with evidence these actions have been completed.

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Final decision

48. I have completed my investigation and uphold Ms C’s complaint. Ms C has been caused an injustice by the actions of the Council. The Council has agreed to take action to remedy that injustice.

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Parts of the complaint that I did not investigate

49. I have not investigated Ms C’s complaint about the Council’s decision she and her family are intentionally homeless because Ms C has the right to request a review.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman