A council has been forced to pay out £18,000 for failing to repair vulnerable residents' flats, including a dad and his young daughter who had to live with water pouring down their walls, which caused a build-up of damp and mould for four years.
The water wrecked internal plastering as well as the family’s belongings, a report by the Housing Ombudsman found. Housing officers visited the property multiple times to take photos and treat the problem but failed to fix it.
The ombudsmen report also noted there were long periods of time when the resident was forced to chase for updates and then had a number of their concerns ignored. They added the London council’s handling of the complaint was delayed and its offer of £150 in compensation was “completely inadequate and disproportionate”.
The council’s housing chief was ordered to apologise in person and pay the family £5,080 in compensation. It also told the council to inspect other properties in the block, MyLondon reports. The ombudsman also highlighted two other cases in the borough.
One resident had been forced to wait five years for council contractors to fix a leak in a neighbour’s flat that had damaged his apartment. Another was left with “intermittent” hot water for two-and-a-half years as they received treatment for cancer. In total, the council was forced to pay out £18,000 to vulnerable residents after failing to carry out repairs on their flats.
Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman, said Hammersmith and Fulham council’s response to the man’s complaint was “shocking”. He said the watchdog has looked into two other separate cases and found the council had committed “significant, multiple and common failings” across them, raising serious concerns about the quality of service to tenants.
Mr Blakeway said: “In all three of the cases, there was a vulnerability present that the landlord either did not take into consideration or ignored. This is simply unacceptable from a social landlord. Running through of all these complaints are failings in repairs, which we see often in our casework. However, it is the length of time residents have been waiting in appalling circumstances that is of greatest concern. There were multiple opportunities for the landlord to resolve all of the issues uncovered in our investigations and yet the urgency to do so wasn’t there."
Hammersmith and Fulham Council said in a statement: “We accept fully the Housing Ombudsman’s decisions and have apologised unreservedly and directly to the residents. We have completed the repairs to the residents’ homes set out in these complaints, but acknowledge that we failed to do so in a timely way in a period when our repairs service was adversely impacted by the Covid lockdowns and one of our three major contractors exiting abruptly.
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“The affected residents have accepted our apologies. In addition to completing the repairs, the Council has provided further support and recompense to these residents. We are working hard to improve all aspects of our repairs service and complaints handling, including directly addressing the Housing Ombudsman’s valuable findings and learning from our residents’ feedback.
“We have strengthened our Housing leadership team and contractor capacity and will continue to do so. We are investing £1m a week over coming years to improve our ageing housing stock, in addition to making millions of pounds of further funding available over the next three years to tackle individual repairs quickly and effectively.
"This includes focusing on issues highlighted in these three cases: leaks causing damp and mould and upgrading windows. We are improving our culture, processes, and systems to ensure that we deliver our repairs promptly and effectively with excellent customer service. More broadly, we are working to improve all Housing services for the benefit of our residents.”
