Council delays placed Northants abuse victim 'at more risk'

A woman who suffered domestic abuse said she was assaulted two more times as she waited for a council to find her accommodation.

The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) has ruled that the way North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) handled the case caused injustice.

The LGO also found that the council pressured her into accepting accommodation at very short notice.

It ordered the authority to pay the woman compensation.

The Ombudsman found that a friend of the woman contacted NNC to say that she was at risk of physical and emotional abuse in her home.

A week later, no accommodation had been offered to the woman - and a mental health professional wrote to the council highlighting the risk she faced.

The council agreed and found the woman somewhere to live, but she told how her partner had returned in the period between the initial report of the abuse and the offer of alternative accommodation.

The man had "trashed" the house, told his mother he intended to kill the woman, and tried to hit her while she had a small child in her arms, the LGO said.

The woman moved into the home offered by the council, who then moved her again with a few hours' notice just before Christmas.

She said she was warned by officers that, if she refused the house, she would not receive any further help and she risked her children being taken from her care as she would not have been acting in their "best interests".

The LGO found her account of the council's actions was "credible".

The Ombudsman found that, if the council had "properly considered" the initial correspondence about her domestic abuse, it would have "owed a duty to provide interim accommodation at that point".

The report continued: "Whilst I cannot hold the Council responsible for [the] assaults, it [...] left her at the avoidable risk of further domestic abuse. This caused significant distress."

The LGO ruled that NNC must apologise for the "injustice caused by the delay" and "inappropriate advice" - as well as pay the woman a total of £700.

It must also provide evidence it had educated relevant staff on the findings of the report within three months.

Jason Smithers, the leader of NNC, said: "On behalf of North Northamptonshire Council, I would like to sincerely apologise for any undue distress.

"The findings of the report will be shared with officers and training provided where appropriate to prevent this from happening again."

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