Councils’ housing allocations schemes is the subject of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s third practical guide for housing officers to help improve services for Disabled people.

The latest guide highlights issues Disabled people face when applying to councils’ housing schemes, and the changes local councils can make to improve those services.

Issues covered in the Guide include councils’ delays when processing, assessing and reviewing medical assessments and housing applications by Disabled people.

The Guide also reminds councils not to rely solely on advice from external medical advisors, many of whom never see the Disabled person or their living arrangements.

The Ombudsman also recommends councils have sufficient discretion within the allocations scheme to be able to take into account people’s individual circumstances.

It also urges councils to think holistically about the service they offer and to include other departments – such as adults and children’s services – to work together to ensure the best possible outcomes.

Ms Amerdeep Somal, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said:

“All too often we see councils not treating people – including Disabled people – as individuals with their own set of personal circumstances when processing applications to housing allocations schemes.

“We have seen cases where local authorities have relied too heavily on independent medical reports to make a decision about a person’s priority, without taking a broader look at that person’s circumstances.

“And we have also seen officers stick too rigidly to flawed beliefs about their councils’ schemes, and assessing people’s applications against the wrong criteria.

“Our new Guide contains a number of useful recommendations that councils can use to take stock of the services they offer. It distils the key learning points into just a few pages and I would urge officers and decision makers who have responsibility for housing applications to have a read and see if their services could be improved.”

The guide, and other resources in the Ombudsman’s campaign to improve housing support for Disabled people, can be downloaded from the Ombudsman’s website.

Article date: 10 July 2025

Today, the Government has published Dr Penny Dash's review of patient safety across the health and care landscape in England.

Rebecca Hilsenrath KC (Hon), Chief Executive of PHSO, said:

"Disentangling the complex and overlapping world of patient safety organisations will improve the way the NHS functions and how it responds when things go wrong.  

 

“Streamlining these organisations was a key recommendation of our Broken Trust report and the Dash Review has recognised how this would better support the delivery of high quality care. 

 

“I welcome the importance placed on managing and learning from complaints and on building on our NHS Complaint Standards which set out how organisations should respond to complaints. A well-handled complaint can be pivotal in driving lasting change and improving care for all.  

 

“We look forward to working with partners to strengthen the use of the Standards so that more NHS organisations get it right first time for patients and families.” 

A domestic abuse survivor was street homeless for five weeks, despite asking London Borough of Waltham Forest for help, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has found.

The man asked the council for help in late January and said he could no longer live with relatives who were abusing him. The council did not act, and the man again contacted the council in February, mentioning the domestic abuse.

The council did nothing to help the man until the middle of March, after the man’s representative threatened the council with legal action. It then offered the man hotel accommodation but did not act when the man said his abuser knew where he was staying, causing him distress.

The man also asked the council for help storing his belongings while he was homeless. But the council said it would not do this unless he paid them an upfront fee of £500 – money which he did not have. The man lost his possessions because he could not afford to pay.

During the period the man was in hotel accommodation, the council failed to confirm a hotel booking, meaning the man was again street homeless for three nights, during which time he said he was assaulted.

The Ombudsman’s investigation into the man’s complaint found the council failed to consider the man’s circumstances when he first approached it as homeless, and also failed to consider whether he was vulnerable as a result of the domestic abuse he suffered when he contacted it in February.  

The investigation also found the council could show no evidence of how it assessed the man’s hotel accommodation as suitable, and also criticised the council for the three-month delay in accepting it owed him the main housing duty.

Ms Amerdeep Somal, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said:

“Waltham Forest council let this man down when he approached it for help. A meeting was arranged when he first contacted the council, but no officer called. He told me he had to make repeated requests for assistance before the council took action and it was not until the council was threatened with legal action that it did anything practical to help.

“This should not have happened, and I am pleased the council has acknowledged the gravity of its errors and accepted the recommendations I have made. I hope other survivors of domestic abuse will be treated better in future.”

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman remedies injustice and shares learning from investigations to help improve public, and adult social care, services. In this case the council has agreed to apologise to the man and pay him £1,600 to acknowledge his distress and time he spent street homeless, its failure to consider the risk posed by the man’s abuser and the delay accepting the main housing duty.

It will also consider the man’s request for a review of its decision to place him in band 3 on its housing register.

The Ombudsman has the power to make recommendations to improve processes for the wider public. In this case the council will remind officers of the low threshold for triggering its duty to offer interim accommodation to people at risk of homelessness and who may be vulnerable. It has agreed to create an action plan to reduce its delays in considering the main housing duty to people in its area. It will also review its policy on how it protects the property of homeless people to ensure it complies with the law.

1 July 2025

Our Complaints Standards team has launched a new Model Complaints Handling Procedure (MCHP) for health and social care services in Northern Ireland.

This is a major step in our work to improve how complaints are handled across the sector. The new MCHP sets out clear stages, timescales and expectations for service providers and complainants.

For Carers Week (9^th – 15^th of June), we recorded a podcast with the Ombudsman Association to discuss our latest own initiative investigation, ‘Are we caring for our carers?’. An own initiative investigation means that we can investigate matters, where we have a reasonable suspicion of widespread maladministration or service failure by public bodies in Wales, even if we have not received a complaint about it from an individual. This latest investigation focuses on the administration of carers’ needs assessments in Wales, and how there is often inconsistent support offered across the investigated authorities.

In the podcast, we discuss:

• Why we focused on unpaid carers
• How system failures impact carers
• Recommendations made to public bodies to improve their processes
• Why we need to better support unpaid carers

You can listen to the podcast here.