Tower Hamlets Council has been found to have failed residents it could have stopped being evicted.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) found the council gave incorrect advice and delayed taking action to help people issued with ‘no fault’ eviction notices.
The council admits this caused “significant harm to residents including avoidable evictions, financial hardship and loss of rights”.
It says it has since taken action to improve.
The ombudsman last year investigated how the council handled residents’ requests for help after they’d been issued Section 21 eviction notices, which have since been outlawed by the Labour government.
It found “serious and systematic failings” in how the council handled such cases.
Before the law’s abolition this year, councils had a legal duty to try and stop people becoming homeless if they’d been given a valid Section 21 eviction notice.
They also have to give emergency temporary accommodation to people who have “priority need” such as families with children.
However, the LGSCO found that the council didn’t meet its duties in more than half of the cases it reviewed as part of its investigation.
The ombudsman found council staff gave people “incorrect advice” including telling people to remain in their homes until bailiffs evicted them.
It also found the council failed to assess whether people were eligible for temporary accommodation, failed to provide them with temporary accommodation, delayed decisions, and showed “delay or discouragement” in accepting applications for help.
Saied Ahmed, the senior Aspire councillor responsible for housing, admitted the failures “had a real impact on residents, and also there were cases leading to avoidable evictions and loss of rights”.
However, he said the council had taken all of the actions to improve that the LGSCO had ordered.
These included reviewing 630 cases, offering people temporary accommodation “where appropriate”, introducing clearer guidance and training to staff, and stronger oversight of decisions.
Cllr Ahmed said this meant “the overall risk to residents has reduced” and was “good news”.
He was speaking as he presented the LGSCO’s findings to councillors at a housing and regeneration scrutiny committee meeting on July 20.
Jennifer Wynter, the council’s manager in charge of homelessness services, said staff had “made sure all the residents that were affected by this have received the recompense they deserved”.
She said “needless to say this is a positive story”.
Ms Wynter said that the council had seen increased demand on its homelessness services and sees “no reason that that will drop with the current housing crisis”.
She noted that although the government has now abolished no-fault evictions, landlords can still evict people for issues such as unpaid rent.
Wynter said that people facing evictions should “come to us as early as possible”.
This would “give us more time to work with them, work with their landlord if at all possible prevent them being made homeless”.
Staff could also “make sure that those evictions are legal and not illegal".
Ms Wynter added that if eviction notices are illegal, the council could “make sure that we deal with that and we get people back into their homes, and that we deal with those landlords that are responsible for that”.
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