Families With Stable Jobs At Risk Of Homelessness In Britain

Homelessness is now a serious risk for working families with stable jobs who cannot find somewhere affordable to live after being evicted by private-sector landlords seeking higher rents, the local government ombudsman has warned. Michael King said nurses, taxi drivers, hospitality staff and council workers were among those assisted by his office after being made homeless and placed in often squalid and unsafe temporary accommodation by local authorities. King said the common perception that homelessness was about people with chaotic lives who slept rough no longer held true. Read more on the Guardian website.

Two Further Councils Have No Section 106 Monitoring

Two London councils have admitted they have no process in place for ensuring developers provide the social housing that they promise to build. Bexley and Redbridge Councils both told Inside Housing that they have no monitoring process for their Section 106 agreements, a failure for which Southwark Council was censured by the Local Government Ombudsman in November last year. Through Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act, local authorities can add planning obligations to specific developments. It is often used to require developers to provide a certain percentage of affordable or social housing. Read more on Inside Housing.

Campaigners Catch Council Out Over Social Housing Commitments

A London borough council failed “for years” to monitor whether developers were providing promised social housing. The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) has found that when imposing conditions for providing social housing through Section 106 Agreements, Southwark Council failed to implement a structured procedure for supervising compliance. To the LGO the council failed to:

·         Properly check compliance with housing provision conditions under section 106 Agreements.

·         Explain how it checks compliance.

·         Explain why it had not undertaken a borough wide audit to check compliance with Section 106 Agreements long after completion of developments.

Read more on 24housing.

Watchdog Slams Council's Illegal 'Gatekeeping'

A council broke the law through its homelessness service’s “aggressive gatekeeping”, a watchdog has found. The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) ordered Eastbourne Borough Council to pay £2,300 after concluding that council officers failed to follow the law and its own policies when handling a vulnerable man’s homelessness application. The ombudsman’s report said Eastbourne Council turned ‘Mr X’ away, despite the fact that he had mental health problems and had been sectioned in the past. The council eventually accepted a duty to house Mr X, but in the meantime he had been evicted, slept rough and lost his possessions. Read more on Inside Housing.

Increase In Complaints About Allocations

Complaints and enquiries about councils’ housing allocations policies have increased 13% in a year, prompting concern from a local government watchdog.  The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) has revealed it received 978 complaints and enquiries about housing allocations in 2014/15, a 13% increase on the previous year. This was made up of 533 enquiries and 445 complaints. The ombudsman investigated 245 cases further and found fault in 42% of these cases. The LGO said that “a significant proportion” of the complaints are from people who have been denied access to the housing register due to changes in qualification requirements, although it was not able to provide figures. It said councils should ensure they don’t disadvantage vulnerable groups. Download the report from the LGO website.

Housing: Disability – Parliamentary Written Answer

Paul Flynn:  To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the conclusions of the Local Government Ombudsman's report entitled No Place Like Home, on the numbers of disabled people on housing waiting lists.

Brandon Lewis: No Place Like Home is about the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless families. Homelessness figures for July to September 2014 show a 38% decrease in the numbers of families with children in bed and breakfast for longer than six weeks, when compared to the same quarter in 2013. This shows that Government’s action on this issue is working. We would not expect the report to have an impact on the numbers of disabled people on housing waiting lists. The statutory reasonable preference categories ensure that people who need to move on medical or welfare grounds, including grounds relating to a disability, are given appropriate priority on social housing waiting lists. [Edit]

Exempt and Wrongly Had Bedroom Tax Imposed – The Maladministration Complaints Are Here

All the pre-1996 exemption cases who have had the bedroom tax imposed upon them in error can and should issue complaints of maladministration against their local council AND against the DWP. They all have strong grounds of ‘maladministration’ by their local councils using the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) and against the DWP with the Parliamentary Ombudsman or PO. In very simple terms both local and central government have not done what they should have done is a good way to look at what maladministration means.  Both the LGO and PO will only investigate if an injustice has been caused yet this is clear with the bedroom tax deduction itself giving them less money and all it means by consequence of that such as skipping one meal a day to pay the bedroom tax etc.  Read more on the Speye blog.

Use of B&B Failing Young People and Families

In a new report, the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) highlights the human impact of councils' inappropriate use of bed and breakfast to house the most vulnerable. A large family inhabiting a single room for months on end; attempted suicide; a child living in a tent for a year; and a family having to wander the streets rather than return home. These are some of the stories behind the increasing number of cases the LGO is investigating about council homelessness services – in particular in relation to families and young people. As a result the LGO is calling on local authorities, central government and policy makers, to learn from the experiences in the report and use them to drive up standards.  The LGO also proposes a series of questions that councillors could consider asking their local authorities when scrutinising the delivery of homelessness services.  Download a copy of the report from the LGO website.