West Northamptonshire Council told to pay man £750 after failing to provide emergency accommodation for second time

West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) has apologised for refusing the man’s homelessness request and for any distress caused. The individual has also complained that the authority repeated failures from a previous incident in 2023, when he was forced to sleep in his car for a fortnight, after he said his mother had assaulted him.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) has told WNC it must pay the man £750 and provide further training for its housing and homelessness staff.

In August 2024, the man approached WNC again for homelessness assistance after he was forced to return to the same place where he had experienced domestic abuse. He told WNC he was sleeping in his car due to the abuse starting again and that he had tried to take his life several times.

The council wrote back and recommended he contact his landlord to ask to move into his tenancy, which was due to start in September, early. It said it recognised he was temporarily homeless, but that he did not meet the “priority need” criteria for temporary accommodation.

The LGSCO report said: “The Ombudsman has already found significant fault with this Council for its handling of Mr X’s case when he previously fled domestic abuse.

“The Council should have considered his approach as a homelessness application, not a request for advice. On balance, I am satisfied that the Council’s actions amount to fault, and had it acted correctly, it would have accepted that Mr X may have been homeless and in priority need when assessing his homelessness application.

“It would therefore have provided Mr X with interim accommodation whilst it assessed his case. The Council has further compounded the distress to Mr X at a difficult time, as it has repeated the failures previously identified by the Ombudsman.”

The investigator also added that WNC’s actions and improvements promised after the 2023 incident had not addressed “the underlying issue” of failing to properly identify and assess homelessness applications.

It has asked the authority to provide it with evidence that it has given staff further training, circulated the investigation and lessons learnt and apologised to the individual for their faults.

A WNC spokesperson said: “We apologise for the distress caused in this case and fully accept the findings and recommendations made by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

“As a council, we are committed to learning from this and have already begun taking steps to implement the Ombudsman’s proposed actions, including providing further training to our housing and homelessness teams.

“We strive to deliver the best possible service to all our residents and take their health, safety, and wellbeing extremely seriously, particularly those facing vulnerable and challenging circumstances.”