Hackney to procure new IT system after three years of struggle following ‘devastating’ cyberattack

While the council is now able to meet a recent promise to make initial visits to council tenants who complained of damp and mould within five days in the majority of cases, it is understood that the council contractors that address the issue have a waiting list of multiple months to visit affected homes to effect repair work. 

“I can tell you with certainty that we’ve been leaving people in mouldy homes for years,” the source said. “People are being funnelled into the long complaints procedure in the hope that they will give up on their complaint.”

The council spokesperson stressed that it has received “three times the number of reports of damp and mould compared to last year” and is continuing to recruit additional staff to help address the backlog.

“Like many other major landlords, the increase in reporting of damp and mould in our homes has impacted on our ability to respond to all cases as quickly as we would like. To help meet demand, we have increased our trade workforce by almost 12% in the last year, we have a appointed a damp and disrepair manager to co-ordinate and manage our response to damp and mould, we are increasing our surveying capacity and have also appointed additional external contractor capacity to support our in-house workforce,” the spokesperson said.

A council insider said that the housing team was not resourced enough to meet the demands outlined for Hackney by the Housing Ombudsman, like proactive check-ins with tenants and heat maps of at-risk properties, after the council was put on the watchdog’s maladministration list.

The council faced criticism from the ombudsman over a case where a resident faced a two-year delay for damp and mould repairs. It also faced national newspaper attention over Mansfield Court, where at least two tenants suffered incurable lung conditions that they believe are exacerbated by the condition of the building.

One resident has declared an intention to sue the council over the damage to their health, while another told us how they have not been moved to a drier property despite health professionals raising concerns over their health.

Inside Housing was also told that the problems were having a serious impact on staff. One source said the turnover was rising, with many staff “living under the spectre” of losing their jobs as the council seeks to make savings of £11m due to funding it is losing from the government’s 7% rent cap. 

“Everyone is miserable. Everyone is fed up. And it’s now a minority who claim not to be. Morale is at rock bottom [for staff],” the source said.

Cyberattacks have increasingly become a major risk for social landlords, with giant housing association Clarion facing a major attack with significant financial consequences last summer. Flagship Housing Association also suffered an attack in autumn 2020.

A Hackney Council spokesperson said the council had “worked tirelessly to recover our systems and data” affected by the cyberattack, including housing, as well as “resolve backlogs of work” that were made worse by the impact of the pandemic.

They added that the council has managed to get a replacement housing register system live in 2022, and restore its repair scheduling system, but confirmed that the council is “moving ahead with work to procure an ‘off-the-shelf’ housing system”.

“We’ve always said that there won’t be a simple moment when we can declare the recovery work ‘done’, but we have made huge progress and are continuing to work hard to deliver full functionality across our services, while at the same time making these systems stronger, better and more secure,” the spokesperson added.

“In the immediate aftermath of the attack we prioritised the recovery of services according to need and risk, and provided interim tools, where needed, to continue delivery of critical services. For example: we were quickly able to make housing benefits payments; our housing repairs service was able to issue work orders within a week of the attacks; we implemented a series of tools to support safeguarding referrals and other social care processes; and we were able to raise orders for goods and services and pay suppliers.

“Many service areas, including areas that were seriously impacted by the attack such as social care, housing benefits and planning, have had their systems restored and are operating normally.”

They added that they were working to improve their “stock condition data” to allow a more proactive approach and have a wide-ranging action plan to ensure that problems will be identified sooner and dealt with quicker.

They said that they “always on inspection looked at root causes to ensure the right preventive action is taken at all times” and “provide advice to residents and increase ventilation where required whilst also ensuring the properties are structurally sound”.

They claimed that the council carried out 80,000 repairs a year and bears responsibility for 30,000 tenanted and leasehold homes, putting it among the largest social landlords in the country.

The spokesperson added that “the housing crisis is having a huge impact across all of London” and that it “creates huge pressures on council staff who desperately want to support all of our residents, but are often unable to provide the solutions that they would want to offer”.

They went on to say that the £11m in savings they had to make in the next four years related to the “limited (and reducing) funding provided” by the government to councils and social housing providers, and the reduced income resulting from a 7% cap on raising social rents.