Now i am sure many of my industry peers will have come across this problem before, however its a first for me having recently changed the Borough i work in
I saw a client who had been given a Not Priority Need decision, as i always do i put in to review this, as i can mostly find an error when trawling the housing file
Now the previous Borough council i worked with were very helpful and would supply the housing file , albeit after some vigorous chasing, free if charge
So you can imagine my surprise when this local council refused to release the file without £10 payment
Now i appreciate there is no law stopping them from charging, but this hit me with a dilemma.
Who pays the £10?
I work for a charity we have no spare funding for this
The client is homeless with very limited funds, £10 to them is a lot of money
I tried to reason with said council, but no joy and as they outsource the review, another situation i had not come up against before, the reviewers were threatening to carry out the review without my input
Thankfully the client is now house and not under homeless duty
But i am still left with the dilemma for future clients, if a client cannot afford to pay for their housing file is this in someway discriminating against their legal right to review?
Im not a solicitor so any input would be appreciated
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