It also paid £500 for the distress, frustration and uncertainty caused.
DoLS are used to ensure vulnerable adults are protected when they lack the mental capacity to consent to their care or treatment.
Southampton City Council’s health overview and scrutiny panel heard that as well as an 18-month delay in carrying out a mental capacity assessment, there was also no record of a visit that the local authority said it had completed.
Both matters were considered by the ombudsman to be faults by the council.
Presenting the council’s action plan to the scrutiny panel, Hannah Balzaretti, head of whole life pathway, said in June there had been 404 DoLS applications on the waiting list.
She said this had fallen to 188 new referrals and 113 renewals.
“Those numbers are coming down and that’s because we have increased the number of staff that are trained to do the best interests in the DoLS applications.
“We have increased the number of service managers and team managers that can do the authorisation of those DoLS and through our data we have greater oversight of the throughput,”she added.
The action plan will be brought back before councillors in six months to assess the progress made.