Lambeth Council ordered to 'radically improve' as Housing Ombudsman finds severe failings

A South London council has been ordered to "radically improve" after a disabled dad and his son were left without a bath or shower for three weeks. The family had to flush using a bucket after workmen left them with no functioning toilet while fitting a ground-floor bathroom in their council flat in 2021. 

The Housing Ombudsman – which deals with complaints about landlords – ordered Lambeth Council's top boss to personally apologise to the man over the disruption caused during the works. Lambeth was also ordered to pay the dad £2,050 in compensation.

The case was one of five involving the council where the Housing Ombudsman said it had identified severe failings. It called on the council to "radically improve" and said it was concerned that Lambeth sometimes treated residents with disrespect and a lack of empathy. 

In another case, a mum and her daughter – who was allergic to damp – were left living in a mouldy home for six months because the council failed to fix a leak in a flat above. The woman first reported the problem in April 2021 but the leak wasn't fixed until late October of the same year.

In an email to the council in September 2021, the woman said her daughter "spends nights itching her skin due to her allergic reactions and eczema flare up until her skin cracks and bleeds, she cannot breathe properly at all so she finds herself up most nights because she is blocked up. She has had time off school due to reactions and therefore I have had to take time off of work."

The Housing Ombudsman ordered Lambeth to pay her £1,350 in compensation and told the council's chief executive to apologise to her. 

In another case singled out by the Housing Ombudsman, a tenant suffering from arthritis and chronic pain was left with a faulty boiler for months. When workmen finally arrived in late December 2021 they removed the fuse, leaving the woman with no hot water over Christmas and the New Year. 

The tenant said the lack of hot heating and hot water worsened her pain. She added that the council didn't take any action until she contacted them on social media, despite ringing daily. 

To keep warm she had to use electric heaters – at one point spending £100 on electricity in a week, according to a Housing Ombudsman report. Lambeth Council was ordered to pay her £950 in compensation. 

Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman, said: "These three cases show both common points of failure and failures across several service areas, which the landlord has vowed to put right.

"The distress and inconvenience experienced by its residents was considerable, and some actions were disrespectful of residents and lacked empathy for the impact on them. It is critical for the landlord to make changes to prevent similar failings affecting other residents.

"This requires strong leadership and a corporate focus on driving change, creating a culture that does not tolerate these sorts of failures. I welcome the constructive and positive engagement of [the] landlord's senior leadership on these issues." 

Lambeth Council said it had been working with the Housing Ombudsman for months to resolve issues and said it was committed to providing the best service to its tenants. 

A council spokesperson said: "Lambeth has more than 33,000 council homes, undertakes over 2,000 repairs each week and our priority is ensuring all of our homes are safe and well-maintained for our tenants. We have invested hundreds of millions of pounds in improving our council homes and estates in recent years, in line with the Lambeth Housing Standard (LHS). But we have also concentrated on making improvements to the day-to-day delivery of repairs and maintenance work.

"Repairs are now being carried out promptly in the vast majority of cases. However, we know that there have been some cases in 2020 where we have not provided the standard of service that our tenants expect. We apologise for all of these, and we also work hard to ensure that any issues are tackled quickly.

"In the three cases identified by the Housing Ombudsman today, we fully accept that the service we provided fell below our usual standards. We have apologised to the tenants for this and, in line with the judgement, we have paid compensation in recognition of the inconvenience and frustration these tenants have experienced. We have also resolved the original problems reported at each property."