Slough Borough Council fined over woman's rent increases
Ms X was placed in a one-bedroom flat by the council when she was homeless in October 2023.She was charged £184.10 a week, which was the local housing allowance - the maximum amount of benefits a person can claim for private rented accommodation.The rent increased to £455 per week in February 2024, and then to £525 in April 2024.The council then refused to give Ms X permanent two-bedroom accommodation because she had accrued "significant rent arrears".She went to the ombudsman after the council failed to uphold her complaint.
'Avoidable distress'
The ombudsman said Ms X's income was less than the difference between her housing benefit and the rest of her rent, so "on the balance of probabilities, the temporary accommodation was unaffordable for Ms X and therefore unsuitable"."Ms X should not have had to make any payments towards her rent and should not have any outstanding amounts on her rent account," it said.SBC was ordered to repay Ms X £2,760 for the rent payments made and to reduce her rent account balance to zero, as well as pay £300 for the "avoidable distress and uncertainty".A council spokesperson said: "We acknowledge we failed to do the proper affordability checks on the temporary accommodation, and this led to Ms X being unable to pay the increased rent and then go into arrears."We apologise to Ms X for the upset and uncertainty caused and we have written to Ms X with our apology."
You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X, or Instagram.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Now shopkeepers are warned putting shoplifters' pictures in their windows breaches data protection - days after row over sign calling them 'scumbags'
Shopkeepers have been warned putting shoplifters' pictures in their windows risks breaching data protection. It comes days after a business owner was told by police to remove a sign calling thieves 'scumbags'. Now the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) suggested the practice 'may not be appropriate' behaviour. On an advice page for tackling shoplifters, the watchdog said stores 'must only share personal information that's proportionate and necessary to achieve your purpose'. In response, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick told The Telegraph: 'Shoplifters should be named and publicly shamed.' He added that the recommendation was 'data protection gone mad'. Richard Tice, Reform UK leader, said: 'We should be letting the general public know of the photographs of people who have a track record of stealing in towns. 'This highlights the complete insanity of GDPR which is damaging to healthcare, it's damaging to law and order. It's damaging to businesses and our economy.' He claimed that the suggestion was siding with thieves over shopkeepers, who should be able to decide who enters their premises. Shadow home office minister Katie Lam recounted a story on X about a constituent who had been ordered by police to remove pictures of suspected shoplifters. The ICO, a non-departmental body sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, added in a blog post from 2023 that thefts could be tackled using data protection laws but only 'as long as it's necessary and proportionate'. In lieu of posting photos of suspected thieves, the body suggests retailers share details of the shoplifters with police or any information they may have about the incident with another store nearby. It also said that sharing photos on messaging platforms had the potential to be similarly inappropriate. Last week, it was revealed that a defiant shopkeeper who was told by police to remove a shoplifting sign in case it caused offence was planning to put up an even bigger one. Police caused a free-speech row when they turned up at Rob Davis's vintage store in North Wales and told him to take down a handwritten sign that referred to shoplifters as 'scum bags'. They told him they had received a complaint about the notice, which stated: 'Due to scum bags shoplifting please ask for assistance to open cabinets.' But Mr Davis, who says he was driven to put it up on his shop door because of escalating shoplifting in Wrexham, told The Mail on Sunday that he had no intention of taking it down. He added: 'The sign is staying – and I may even get a bigger one. 'It's a simple point, in my opinion, and succinctly put, and can't cause offence apart from to anyone intending to steal from me. 'I was even polite and put "Thank you" on the bottom.' Mr Davis, 59, said he put it up a month ago in frustration after discovering that he was losing almost his entire monthly profit because of thieves – but was astonished to then get a visit from the police. He said: 'A police officer and PCSO came in. They said the sign was provocative and potentially offensive. 'When I asked, 'Why, who it could be offensive to?' the officer didn't answer. The only person who can be offended by the words 'scum bag' is a scum bag who wants to steal from me!' Mr Davis said he had received overwhelming support from fellow shopkeepers in the face of a tidal wave of theft in the town. 'There's been massive support everywhere since the sign went up,' he added. 'Shopkeepers are all in the same boat; everyone is having stuff stolen, even cafes.' He began locking goods in cabinets after he said police failed to deal with earlier shoplifting incidents. He added: 'Over the past year I have caught five people shoplifting. After the first, I called the police. They handed the stolen shirt to me and let the shoplifter go. Now I don't bother reporting them. Almost every day I get shoplifting.' He said that after putting out 30 sets of fishnet stockings, 20 were taken, adding: 'Theft has definitely got worse. 'If you are £200 down because of shoplifting that might be my profit for the whole month.' Mr Davis said retailers in the town were facing a number of prolific shoplifters and criticised police efforts to tackle them. 'I pay two lots of rates, business and residential, and part goes to policing. I'm not getting the service I'm paying for. 'If I had a builder and he didn't provide the service properly, I wouldn't pay.' He urged police: 'Just do the job you are there for. You are a public service. You don't need to be coming here telling me anything unless I am doing something wrong, otherwise leave me alone.' North Wales Police said: 'All reports of shoplifting are taken extremely seriously. We are committed to combatting retail theft.' Shoplifting figures released this week by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) showed just 2.5 per cent of offences were recorded by the police each year. It said 50,000 shoplifting incidents go unreported every day as firms give up on the police. BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said: 'Many retailers do not see the point of reporting incidents to the police.'
Times
33 minutes ago
- Times
ScotRail to introduce first penalty tickets for fare dodgers
Passengers who deliberately board trains without a ticket to escape fares are facing a crackdown. ScotRail said it was considering financial measures such as forcing dodgers to pay a 'minimum fare' for the whole route rather than, at present, being required to pay only the fee for the claimed length of their journey. Fare dodging deprives the rail company of millions of pounds a year. In the past financial year ScotRail recorded 1,644 instances of fare dodging, up from 869 the year before, although this is likely to be an underestimate of the actual number of incidents. No fares were recovered in more than half of the recorded cases. In England fare dodgers face £100 fines but this system has not been adopted in Scotland. However, charging evaders in Scotland a minimum fare is expected to act as a deterrent because passengers who make short journeys that cost less than the minimum will have to pay more. The problem is most acute when trains are busy and ticket inspectors face difficulties checking all tickets, particularly where travellers make short journeys. An industry source told Scotland on Sunday: 'This looks like a revenue protection initiative, where a passenger with no ticket on a train or at the end of their journey is obliged to buy a 'minimum fare' ticket. 'This would probably be more expensive than many low-value ScotRail tickets, such as a £3 Mount Florida to Glasgow Central single, and act as an encouragement for passengers to buy a ticket before boarding a train. It's believed to be better than a penalty fares scheme.' Claire Baker, Scottish Labour's transport spokeswoman, said: 'It is not right that commuters are forced to pay more because a small minority are trying to game the system.' ScotRail, the state-owned train operator, estimated it lost £10 million a year to ticket fraud. The company identified a minimum fares strategy among key initiatives it was considering in this financial year, subject to approval from Transport Scotland. The apparent rise in fare dodging, the company says, is mainly because of an increase in revenue protection officers aboard trains rather than a decline in passenger behaviour. Transport Scotland said: 'ScotRail has a number of ways to make it easy for passengers to buy their tickets before they board, online, via the app, ticket machine or from ticket offices. 'In line with their existing revenue protection policy, additional measures to further reduce ticketless travel are under consideration.'
The Independent
33 minutes ago
- The Independent
Nicola Sturgeon says she still misses Alex Salmond
Scotland's former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that she still misses her mentor Alex Salmond 'in some way'. The pair formed one of the most successful political partnerships in UK history however their relationship deteriorated and then broke down after sexual misconduct allegations against him emerged. Following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2020, Mr Salmond was cleared of all 13 charges, which included attempted rape and sexual offences. In an exclusive interview with ITV News before the publication of her memoir Frankly on Thursday August 14, Ms Sturgeon said she misses the relationship she used to have with her mentor. And she said she was hit by a 'wave of grief' after hearing of his death in October last year. Speaking to ITV News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham, she said: 'Even today I still miss him in some way, the person that I used to know and the relationship we used to have. 'But I thought I had made my peace with it, that I'd got to a point where I felt nothing. 'And then I got a call to tell me that Alex Salmond had died. I started crying on the phone and I just was hit by this wave of grief… and it was complicated because obviously we weren't just no longer friends, we were political enemies. 'There was no prospect I was going to be able to go to his funeral or anything like that and it was a kind of strange, strange feeling.' Mr Salmond went on to become leader of the Alba Party, which became a frequent critic of his former party the SNP. He died suddenly of a heart attack in October in North Macedonia at the age of 69. Ms Sturgeon, who succeeded him as Scotland's first minister in 2014, said: 'At the point he died, I hadn't spoken to him for years. 'I felt really deeply the loss of the relationship with him. I suddenly didn't have him. He wasn't there. I couldn't talk to him. And I went through this period of I would still talk to him in my head. 'I would have vivid dreams that we were still on good terms. And then I'd have this feeling of such sadness when I remembered the reality. 'So, I went through that process. I still missed him in some bizarre way.' During the interview Ms Sturgeon is also asked by Ms Etchingham about her description of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as 'odious' in her memoir. She said: 'This is my impression, other people might have a different view of him. He just comes across as somebody who's got a very, very fragile ego. 'Somebody who's not particularly comfortable, particularly around women. 'In the 2015 leaders debate just before we went on air that night, I just remember hearing him tell somebody how much he'd had to drink, in the green room area beforehand, and it just felt this kind of bravado and just not very pleasant.' Nicola Sturgeon: The Interview will broadcast on Monday August 11 at 7pm on ITV1, ITVX & STV. An extended version of the interview will be available on ITVX in the following days.
