Admin blunder adds fuel to resident’s accusations of ‘council incompetence’

By Ben Lynch, Local Democracy Reporter

A resident has decried the ‘incompetence’ of her council after being looped into an internal email thread relating to a complaint she made about delayed repairs to her home.

Rikke Osterlund, 46, said she had been in a protracted bid to get the City of London Corporation to fix damage to window sills at her home in Lewisham, which the Corporation owns the freehold for, and which was caused by damp and mould.

When she filed a complaint, it led to her accidentally being copied in to a thread discussing her case. This followed a series of works carried out on her estate, including new windows, which she claimed had led to condensation.

Ms Osterlund lives with her husband and children in Otto Close on the Sydenham Hill Estate, Lewisham. It is one of several the City of London owns and manages which sit outside the Square Mile, with others including the Southbank Estates in Southwark.

The works to Otto Close involved new windows, upgraded ventilation and redecoration, with the City saying it spent £1.8 million on the project. Ms Osterlund said scaffolding went up around the estate in October 2022, to enable works to begin.

Her replacement windows were installed by the following summer, though she said the scaffolding stayed up until March this year – a total of 15 months – due to delays to the ventilation works.

She said it was in winter last year that she began experiencing issues with water running down her new windows and pooling on the sills. This is what she believes resulted in damp and mould in several rooms in her home, with other residents complaining of similar complications following the installation.

“It would be a lot of condensation every morning when you woke up, even if you opened your windows a bit,” she said. This led to mould ‘several millimetres high’, she added, a particular concern given her son has asthma. Despite sending numerous emails to the City over the winter, Ms Osterlund said no-one was sent to visit her home.

Ms Osterlund said she was later informed the City believed the cause of the damp and mould to be a leak, a diagnosis she rejected. It was at that point, in June this year, that she filed a stage one complaint.

Earlier this month, she chose to escalate her complaint to stage two, due to not being satisfied the City had sufficiently addressed her concerns.

To compound the issue, Ms Osterlund was recently looped into an internal email thread among City of London employees discussing her case. This followed the visit in which the cause of the damp and mould was identified as likely to be condensation.

While the thread did not reveal anything particularly damning, Ms Osterlund described the slip-up as indicating ‘sheer incompetence’, adding she was ‘so angry’ after receiving the correspondence.

Ms Osterlund said: “That frustrates me greatly. It’s so shoddy, and it’s just wrong.”

A City of London Corporation spokesman said: “The City of London Corporation has completed a £1.8m project to replace windows, upgrade ventilation and redecorate Otto Close. As part of the window replacement works, an upgraded ventilation system has been supplied for each home.

“Our officers are in close communications with leaseholders on the Sydenham Hill Estate and working with them to listen to their concerns. The project was completed in March.”

Pictured top: Rikke Osterlund (Picture: LDRS)