£10,000 awarded to residents following ‘inexcusable’ failures by Southwark Council

The Housing Ombudsman has made two findings of severe maladministration in two different cases for Southwark Council – one for failures in damp and mould and the other for poor complaint handling.

In the first case, the council landlord was issued with a severe maladministration finding for its complaint handling after reports of heating loss during winter months by a resident who was pregnant and had a young child. The Ombudsman also found maladministration for the loss of heating. 

The landlord’s delays in handling the complaint meant the resident was left without heating for six months in the coldest period of the year.

Additionally, the landlord’s complaint responses were delayed, did not address the concerns of the resident, did not follow its own complaint policy and were issued without any apology or empathy, said the Ombudsman.

Other failures included not escalating the resident’s complaint to stage two, instead creating a new stage one complaint underneath her existing complaint. It took the Ombudsman issuing a Complaint Handling Failure Order and the local MP getting involved before it was escalated. Further, the landlord’s offer of compensation was too low and delayed.

The Ombudsman ordered the landlord to apologise to the resident and pay £2,000 in compensation.

In the second case, the Ombudsman found severe maladministration for how Southwark Council responded to a leak and damp and mould. There was also maladministration for the council landlord’s complaint handling and record keeping.

The resident and his young family were left with a worsening leak which impacted multiple rooms for 11 months, with the landlord refusing his requests for rehousing and compensation.

The damp and mould side of the complaint was not fixed for 17 months, which was particularly distressing for the resident whose children had eczema and allergies.

The Ombudsman had to take this timescale from resident reports as the repairs logs from the landlord were not kept. The landlord also failed to provide any survey reports when asked by the Ombudsman.

The landlord’s lack of resolution focus was inappropriate and the unfulfilled repair orders suggest Southwark Council failed to avoid or minimise the identified damp and mould hazard over an inappropriate timeframe, the Ombudsman said.

Southwark Council was ordered to pay the resident £7,541 in compensation, respond to the residents’ rehousing request and carry out a full inspection on the damp and mould in the home.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: ‘These two cases concern different services the landlord provides but, in both instances, it fell well short of how it should have responded.

‘Residents deserve repairs to be fixed within correct timescales and for complaint responses to be appropriate in tone.

‘It’s inexcusable for young families to live with disrepair for an extended period, especially as the landlord’s own records showed it was monitoring the issue.

‘The council is a significant landlord in the capital and it is crucial for it to apply the lessons from these cases to help respond to the pressures on its services and to prevent residents experiencing avoidable detriment.

‘I welcome the landlord’s response on its learning from this case and the changes made to improve its service. I would encourage other landlords to consider the learning the case offers for their own services.’

Southwark Council said that since the Ombudsman’s investigations it has established a dedicated damp and mould team, improved its voids process and carried out a review of its complaint handling.

‘Both of these cases make for very difficult reading and we would like to apologise unreservedly for the distress caused to these families by our actions and processes,” said the council.

‘As soon as the Ombudsman raised these with us, we made immediate changes to our processes to try to prevent such failures happening again.’

Image: Bill Wegener and Openverse