A mother and baby were left to live in a damp and mouldy bedsit for two years by a London council despite the child suffering from fungal rashes and the woman complaining of flare-ups of her Crohn’s disease.
Westminster council has been found guilty of severe maladministration by the housing ombudsman in a damning 16-page report detailing its treatment of the young family.
The mother, who has not been named, had repeatedly complained to her council landlord that her son “kept falling ill due to the mould and damp” in their flat.
Such was her concern for her child that she had been forced to occasionally leave their mid-terrace 1960s apartment block to spend time sleeping on her own mother’s sofa just to give him some respite.
Despite evidence being provided of concerns about her son’s health in the form of a doctor’s letter, Westminster council refused to rehouse the family, insisting that repair works could be carried out while they were residing there.
There were, however, repeated delays in those repairs being carried out, leaving the mother to complain that her own health was being affected.
The case has echoes of the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who was killed by mould in a social housing flat in Rochdale in 2020 – a tragedy that ushered in government reforms when it came to light last year.
Commenting on the Westminster case, the housing ombudsman, Richard Blakeway, said: “There were excessive delays in the landlord progressing the works to remedy the rising damp that cannot be fully justified by issues with access.
“The landlord failed to evidence that it had taken into account the individual circumstances of the resident, either in respect of its handling of the repairs or in its decision to refuse to decant the resident and her son.
“The landlord also failed to recognise, given the age of the resident’s son, the risk of detrimental impact on his health and wellbeing.
“After the tragic case of Awaab Ishak, there is a need for landlords to ensure they know their residents and understand the individual circumstances in order to deal appropriately with any issues.”
Westminster council, which said it fully accepted the judgment, has been instructed to apologise. The family was awarded £2,300 in compensation. The ombudsman welcomed the council’s subsequent changes to its operations, adding that it would “encourage other landlords to consider the learning the case offers for their own services”.
About 450,000 homes in England have problems with condensation and mould. Awaab Ishak died in 2020, eight days after his second birthday, as a direct result of black mould that had been reported by his family to their social housing provider three years earlier.
In the Westminster case, the mother similarly first complained about mould and damp in her hallway, kitchen and bathroom on 5 September 2019, when her child was four months old.
Six days later, Westminster council officials had visited the address and confirmed there was damage to the walls and that there was an ongoing leak that posed a risk to the child living there.
A job was raised to fix the problems, but the mother issued a letter of claim through a solicitor on 10 October that stated that there was damp throughout the home.
The council subsequently found it difficult to get access to the property, the ombudsman report notes. But the mother’s repeated requests between February and October 2020 to be temporarily rehoused while the repairs were being carried out were rejected and the works remained outstanding as of January 2022.
