Waltham Forest failed to efficiently manage the contractors carrying out the repairs on a home with leaks and mould, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter

Waltham Forest Council has been ordered to pay more than £2,000 after failing to deal with a damp and mouldy home for almost two years.
A resident was stuck dealing with a leak in her flat for one year and eleven months, despite raising it with the council and escalating her complaints.
The Housing Ombudsman, which regulates landlords such as councils, said Waltham Forest suffered from issues with its communication and record-keeping.
During the complaints process, Waltham Forest failed to efficiently manage the contractors carrying out the repairs, the regulator said. This shortfall resulted in a “great deal of time, trouble, and distress for the resident in pursuing the matter”.
Waltham Forest also did not respond to all of the residents’ concerns, nor do so in a timely way.
Its failure to use the “complaints procedure to put right what was wrong” ended up “perpetuating” the resident’s anxieties.
When asked, the council was only able to produce a repair log and the resident’s complaint. The ombudsman said “record keeping failures underpin the landlord’s ability to action both repairs and complaint handling robustly”.
In June, it ordered the council to pay the resident £2,075 in compensation, apologise to them, and carry out inspections of the flat. The ombudsman had first been notified of the issue in June 2022.
At a meeting last night (16th October), councillors were told the resident had been compensated and a new bathroom had been installed.
The council says that “poor handling of complaints” early on in the process were at the “at the root” of maladministration and severe maladministration findings.
Officers say the housing team has also “failed to take the opportunity provided by the formal complaints process to build rapport with residents” and “proactively” coordinate repairs once an issue has been raised.
The council says it has since “overhauled” its complaints process and is now operating at a 93% response rate.
It also vowed to improve its “success rate” in accessing homes in a timely manner, keep records of interactions with residents, and implement a formal “zero-tolerance approach” to cases of damp and mould.
The case was one of 18 identified by the ombudsman this week as a teachable example for other local authorities.
The regulator said councils should “keep robust records for all repairs jobs” to “ensure that the quality of works is high and can be assessed”.
The Housing Ombudsman has been cracking down on social landlords throughout 2024.
A council report, published this week, said the most common issues involved taking too long to respond to complaints, failing to make “proper apologies” in responses, and a lack of communication with complainants.
Back in February, Waltham Forest was slapped with £18,800 in fines over three cases of severe maladministration.
The cases involved the council failing to address individual issues with damp, mould and antisocial behaviour in its social housing.
Former Housing Secretary Michael Gove, then a Conservative MP, called the ombudsman’s findings “unacceptable” and said the council’s handling of the complaints fell “well below the standard residents should expect”.
Deputy leader Ahsan Khan apologised “unreservedly”.
Councils in neighbouring boroughs, such as Redbridge and Haringey, have also been handed hefty fines by the regulator for service failures.
Authorities across the UK will also be under closer scrutiny as part of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which lays out a raft of measures to better monitor housing services.
They will be subject to ‘Ofsted-style’ inspections every four years and regulators will have the power to impose unlimited fines on underperforming authorities.
As part of the council’s response, it says it has carried out a “deep dive” into complaints and has spoken with residents.
Many of the provisions in the Act are a response to the Grenfell fire, which saw 72 people die after cladding in a tower block caught fire.
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