Council to pay £4k after woman and children housed in one room at B&B

The Local Government Ombudsman has told a local authority to pay out nearly £4,000 after it mishandled a homeless application.

Mistakes by Birmingham City Council meant a woman and her four children were forced to live in a one-room bed and breakfast for more than four months.

The woman complained to the LGO about the handling of her case and the authority’s decision to bill her nearly £1,900 for the removal and storage of her possessions.

She had fled her council home in June 2010 after incidents of harassment and intimidation. The woman then applied to Birmingham as being homeless.

In August 2010, the council rejected her application. This decision was upheld on review.

A county court judge subsequently ordered Birmingham to review the case again. It took the council until July 2011 to accept the woman was homeless.

This was more than a year after a review had been requested. The woman and her children had spent 17 weeks of this period in the one-room B&B accommodation.

She was also moved to three-bedroom accommodation which had a broken oven, no hot water in the shower and a mice infestation.

The LGO investigation also found that Birmingham did not take into account the woman’s financial and personal circumstances when calculating the amount that was reasonable to pay for storage.

The Ombudsman recommended that the local authority:

• apologise to the complainant;
• pay her £1,980 for the stress and anxiety caused by living in unsuitable accommodation and the delay in dealing with a homeless review decision;
• pay the family £2,000 in recognition of the injustice caused to the children for living in B&B accommodation for a prolonged period; and
• reassess its charges for the removal and storage of the complainant’s possessions.

Birmingham has accepted the LGO’s recommendations and promised to provide the recommended remedy.

Nigel Ellis, Executive Director for Investigations at the LGO, said: “Nearly four months is a totally unacceptable period for any family to be housed in bed and breakfast – let alone a five person family in one-room accommodation – and that is why such a significant amount has been recommended as a remedy for the injustice.

“An inappropriate use of bed and breakfast accommodation by councils to house people is a trend we are noticing, so we want other councils to be aware that government guidance is clear that it is an unsuitable long term option for families.”