Fresource Friday: Protection of Belongings letters

Following my earlier post about the duty to protect homeless applicants' possessions, you can now - if you work for a council or housing association in England or Wales - download some free protection of belongings documents.

Use the documents to check and improve the documentation you use when:

• accepting the protection of belongings duty; and
• notifying the applicant that the duty has ended.

How to download the documents

All you need to do is:

1. Create an account, using your work email (you'll receive a confirmation email);
2. Wait for your application to be approved (you'll receive a second email); and then
3. Go to the relevant page in the Resources section for each document (there are links below);
4. Click on 'Buy document'; and
5. Click on the 'pdf', 'docx' or 'txt' download link.

These download links become active once your account has been approved.

What documents are available?

The documents fall into four categories:

Refusing to accept the duty is owed:

• Decision that there's no duty to protect belongings.

There's no freestanding duty to notify a homeless applicant of a decision that the duty is not owed. However, this letter is useful if you've been asked to take action to protect the applicant's personal property but you decide the duty isn't owed.

When the duty is accepted:

• Letter to applicant enclosing agreement and confirming payments due.

See also the Protection of belongings agreement for applicants (see further below). To access this document you need to buy credits or take advantage of the free credits offer.

Warning the applicant that the duty may end:

• Warning an applicant who has asked property to be moved to specific location that the duty will end;
• Warning an applicant that the council is minded to end the duty because there's no longer danger of loss or damage to their belongings;
• Warning an applicant that the council is minded to end the duty because they have failed to maintain payments.

Notifying the applicant that the duty has ended

• Duty has ended because there's no longer any danger of damage or loss of the property;
• Duty has ended because the belongings have been moved as per the applicant's request;
• Duty has ended because the applicant has failed to make payments.

Alternatively, you can browse the documents in the Resources section by simply entering "section 212" in the freetext search box.

If you work for a Welsh council

If you're in Wales there's a separate suite of documents, incorporating different versions of the above documents. Simply go the Resources section and search for "section 93".

Be quick!

The documents will only be free until 30 June 2017 31 December 2017.

Imposing conditions on the duty

There's also a document setting out:

• what payments the applicant must make towards collection and storage costs, and
• the conditions you're imposing which, if breached, may result in the duty ending.

I explained the importance of getting this documentation right and confirming the conditions before you take action to protect belongings in my earlier post.

To access this last document you'll need to purchase credits (or book a day's training to take advantage of the free credits offer).

Problems / comments about the documents?

Let me know how you get on via the contact page.