CEREDIGION county council has been forced to apologise and pay £100 to a homeless woman who complained to the Ombudsman over the way the authority handled her application for housing.

The Public Ombudsman for Wales, Nick Bennett, found in favour over the woman, identified as Ms A in a casebook report, over failings in response by the council’s Environmental Health Service.

Ms A said she “specifically complained” that the council had “failed to act appropriately after it had given her homelessness points.” She also said that it had not communicated effectively with her about her housing situation.

The Ombudsman did not identify any critical failings in terms of the way in which the council’s Housing Service had dealt with Ms A’s housing applications and also found that the Housing Service had acted “appropriately after it had determined that Ms A was homeless.”

“However,” the report found, “it is concluded that the EHS had not responded to two referrals, which it had received from the council’s Housing Service, satisfactorily.”

Partly upholding the complaint, the Ombudsman recommended that the council should “write to Ms A to apologise for the EHS failings identified”; “pay Ms A a nominal sum of £100 in recognition of the fact that some of the housing difficulties, which she experienced, might have been ameliorated and/or eliminated if the EHS failings identified had not occurred”, and “review the way in which its EHS responds to complaints with a view to preventing a recurrence of the failings identified.”

The council agreed to implement the recommendations.