Lambeth Council ordered to pay out £13,000 after six severe maladministration findings 

In this case, the council maintained that it does not hold any records of telephone conversations between residents and its contact centre, and that the surveyor managing the works had since left the council, meaning it could not find any relevant correspondence. 

As a result, this resident was awarded £6,400 in compensation, and Lambeth was asked to apologise to the resident and undertake any remaining repairs.

Two findings of severe maladministration were found by the ombudsman in a second case for how Lambeth dealt with window replacement and how it dealt with the leak that led to the windows needing to be replaced.

It took eight months for the landlord to respond to the resident’s concerns about a large crack in the window. 

Even after a surveyor had attended to approve the replacing of the windows, the repair should have been carried out within 90 days. However, it took the landlord 1,315 days. 

During the complaint, the landlord had marked the repair as complete, despite the work having not started, and a scaffold was erected for a year-and-a-half but was not used and was taken down as it was not needed to complete the work.

The resident was left chasing the landlord to complete the work, sometimes spending more than 90 minutes on a call. 

At the same time, a leak had still not been repaired at the point the ombudsman investigated, four years after it was first reported. 

This resident was awarded £1,400 in compensation and Lambeth was ordered to conduct a survey to complete the outstanding repair and apologise.

In the final case, the ombudsman found severe maladministration for how the landlord responded to a vulnerable resident’s outstanding repairs related to damp and mould, a damaged door and blocked drains, which it did not rectify for five years.

During this time the resident raised a legal claim against the landlord, which was dropped when it agreed to carry out the work. However, this work still never happened.

Lambeth failed to consider the resident’s vulnerability when proposing a decant, something the resident was against due to her mobility issues and concerns that she would be unable to return.

In this instance a surveyor had said that the work could be carried out without the need to be decanted. As a result, the ombudsman said that Lambeth’s “lack of movement on this issue unreasonably delayed the repair being completed”.

This resident was awarded £5,200 in compensation and Lambeth was told to complete the work and review its housing management complaints policy against the Complaint Handling Code and its self-assessment.

Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman, said: “These latest findings show three residents having to go to extraordinary lengths to get the landlord to resolve serious problems with the condition of their homes.

“In each case, the delays to repairs being completed after first being reported was unreasonable and caused huge distress to all households. 

“There are different moments in all three of the cases where the landlord could have put things right. Instead, it either let the problem worsen or did not act quickly enough to get a handle on the situation. In all of the cases, the complaint responses were inadequate and only served to provide more frustration for those residents.

“The intervention of the ombudsman has led to the landlord taking important actions to improve the living conditions for each resident and provide redress for the service failings they experienced.

“The landlord has accepted the service failures and, as an important provider of housing and one whose services are under significant pressure, it is critical to learn from each case to improve its services.”

The ombudsman said it will publish a report next year outlining how the council has responded to its findings. 

In a statement, Lambeth Council promised to learn from the issues identified in these cases so it can improve the service it provides to residents.

The council said: “We are determined that every one of our tenants and leaseholders receive the high-quality service they deserve from us.

“We are therefore extremely sorry that our service in these cases did not meet the high standards expected. Lambeth has apologised to each tenant for the distress and inconvenience they have experienced because of these failings; we have paid compensation and resolved the problems reported at each property, to each tenant’s satisfaction.”

Lambeth said it has completed the necessary work in two of these cases and has arranged for the tenant to move out in the other while the work is finished. 

“We will learn from these cases, and ensure we provide the best possible service to all our tenants and leaseholders. Lambeth is committed to tackling all problems quickly and fairly, and we have worked intensively with the Housing Ombudsman Service and with residents to improve the way we respond to complaints,” the council said.

“Despite continuing reductions in government funding, Lambeth has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in improving our council homes and estates in recent years. We have also awarded 10 repair and maintenance contracts to new providers as part of our drive to improve standards and services for council tenants.”

The council believes that the improvements it has already implemented, including extra training for complaint-handlers, are already having a lasting positive impact.