Council ordered to pay £10,000 for ‘inexcusable’ failings by Housing Ombudsman

A council has been ordered to pay nearly £10,000 for “inexcusable” failings regarding housing repairs.

The UK’s Housing Ombudsman has ordered Southwark council to pay compensation for two cases of “severe maladministration.” 

In one of the cases a young family was left without heating for 6 months during the coldest period of the year. The council was ordered to pay £2,000 compensation.

The Ombudsman also ordered Southwark to pay over £7,000 in compensation to a family with young children who were left with worsening damp and mould issues for 17 months.

In a statement, the Housing Ombudsman described the councils inaction in both cases as “inexcusable” and said it “fell well short of how it should have responded”.

Leader of the Southwark Liberal Democrats, Victor Chamberlain, said: “These failings are putting lives at risk and we should not have to rely on the Housing Ombudsman to step in, yet again, to put things right.

“The repairs service needs a complete overhaul and new investment. 

“Everyone in Southwark deserves safe, good quality housing but Labour is failing to provide it.”

Last year, Southwark was found to be the eighth most complained about council in England following a review from the Local Government Ombudsman, with 70 per cent of complaints received by the council during the time of the review relating to housing issues.

A spokeswoman from Southwark council said: “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.

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

Pictured top: Southwark council (Picture: Google Street View)