Case Ref: 23 018 182 Category: Children's care services Sub Category: Friends and family carers

• The Council will provide evidence of the following:the Council raising the importance of engaging with foster carers even when children or young people do now want to meet their social workers;the Council sharing Miss X’s suggestion that fostering training should cover what happens when things go wrong, or placements break down. The Council should also provide the outcome of this.

Case Ref: 23 013 997 Category: Benefits and tax Sub Category: Other

• By training or other means, remind relevant staff to ensure they take debtors’ individual circumstances into account and to avoid adopting a blanket approach when setting up debtors’ payment plans.

Case Ref: 23 009 637 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: 23 009 558 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will review the way it covers its housing department’s staff holidays or absences. When an officer goes on leave, their caseload should be covered so homeless people are not left waiting.
• The Council will share a copy of this decision and the Ombudsman’s published focus report, “More Home Truths – learning lessons from complaints about the Homelessness Reduction Act” (published March 2023) with relevant staff, and discuss them at both an appropriate team meeting and a management meeting.

Case Ref: 23 005 475 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• Within two months the Council will review the wording in the template letter accepting the main housing duty to ensure it provides clear and accurate information about the continuing duty to keep the suitability of accommodation under review and the timescale for requesting a review of the suitability of accommodation;
• within two months the Council will issue a written briefing to remind case officers of the need to complete a suitability assessment for homeless applicants at an early stage to ensure their housing needs are fully understood before any offers of accommodation are made. Where the household includes a person with a medical condition or disability, the need for a medical or OT assessment should be considered early on as part of this process.

Case Ref: 23 002 076 Category: Housing Sub Category: Allocations

• The Council will remind relevant officers of the importance of updating the tenancy records without delay when housing allocation decisions and/or medical priority review decisions are made.

Case Ref: 22 011 790 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Assessment and care plan

• The Council will take action to ensure officers produce care and support plans when they identify eligible needs for care and support.
• The Council will review the information available for blind people on direct payments and financial assessments to make sure it is suitable for their needs.

Case Ref: 22 005 745 Category: Other Categories Sub Category: Leisure and culture

• The Council will take whatever action it deems appropriate to ensure that the provider of children's play centres amends its complaints policy.

Case Ref: 22 009 383 Category: Housing Sub Category: Homelessness

• The Council will remind relevant staff of the importance of ensuring they properly consider whether there is reason to believe a homeless applicant may be in priority need, keep a proper record of how it considered this, and confirm in writing a decision it does not owe a duty to provide interim accommodation.
• The Council will remind relevant staff of the importance of ensuring they store records of all telephone calls and emails on the applicants housing file to ensure a clear audit trail of actions taken.
• The Council will remind relevant staff of the importance of ensuring they make appropriate enquiries before deciding whether the Council owes a main housing duty, and specifically that it seeks information from the applicant before deciding they are not in priority need.
• The Council will remind relevant staff of the importance of ensuring they send all decision letters to applicants by email, where an email address is available, or in cases where an email address is not available, issues the decision letter to the applicant in person if at all possible.
• The Council was a fault in the way it handled a homelessness application. It will review whether there are any lessons to be learned from the complaints handling in this case and, in particular, consider why it did not identify any failings in its complaints process at stage 1 or stage 2, although it identified a number of failings in response to Ombudsman enquiries.

Case Ref: 22 006 243 Category: Transport and highways Sub Category: Other

• The Council should review the policies and procedures it has for working with its enforcement agents
• The Council should have systems in place for ensuring that its records are updated when informed of a service-users change of address and that all known methods of communication with a service-user are utilised before applying storage charges for keeping a car in storage when it has been released for collection.