Several London councils have been slammed over “indefensible” failures to act on faulty windows which have seen some families’ waiting up to five years for repairs.
By Josef Steen, Local Democracy Reporter
Several London councils have been slammed over “indefensible” failures to act on faulty windows which have seen some families’ waiting up to five years for repairs.
The social housing Ombudsman this week urged landlords to pay more attention to people’s individual circumstances after he published an investigation into a litany of cases – more than half involving children – where repairs to windows were delayed. In one particularly “inexcusable” case, a baby’s faulty and draughty window didn’t get fixed by Harrow Council until they were a toddler, even though it knew about the problem since before their family moved in.
Ombudsman Richard Blakeway criticised social landlords across London for letting repairs “drag on for years” because of planned major works. Though the watchdog acknowledged that the process could be complex and expensive, he said some of the conditions people had endured were impossible to justify.
“Crucially, we repeatedly see a failure to connect the circumstances of the household to the condition of the property. Reports of the risk of falling, fire safety, and exposure to cold and damp and mould are not always heeded by landlords. Nor are health conditions are factored into the landlord’s response,” the watchdog said.
Lambeth Council, for instance, took three years to act on windows it knew were unfit because it was waiting to carry out major works on the property. Yet the watchdog said it was not clear if the resident had even been given this reason. A similar story emerged in Lewisham, where the council left a high-rise bedroom window boarded up for four years. The resident living there had repeatedly sounded the alarm about his children’s safety and their lack of access to natural light.
The report came the same week the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) reported that 9 children have died after falling from windows in social housing in the last six years. The NCMD said in some cases families had reported broken windows several times but their landlord or local authority had not fixed them quickly enough.
A cluster of borough councils were also singled out for failing to deal with complaints. This included Hammersmith and Fulham, whose responses in one case were “full of missed opportunities”. The landlord not only had poor records throughout but had twice marked these repairs as complete without giving a reason.
In Islington, a mother contacted her council because none of the windows in her flat could close properly, leaving her scared for her son whose compromised immune system was aggravated by cold weather. “There was no evidence the landlord assessed this risk,” the Ombudsman said, and despite her complaints throughout the winter months, nothing was resolved.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Islington’s executive member for homes and communities, Cllr John Woolf, apologised on behalf of the council for communications that “fell short of the standard the resident deserved”, and admitted the delays – due to planned major works – were unacceptable. The council was already learning from its mistakes, he said, by speeding up window repairs and improving its reporting systems. He added that these changes had been shared with the watchdog.
All councils mentioned in the report shared a statement on how they had acted following the investigation. Harrow, Lambeth and Hammersmith and Fulham said they had invested hundreds of millions of pounds maintaining and improving council homes and made changes to their services. Lewisham was hiring more repairs staff, working closer with contractors and spending more money on internal systems to improve record-keeping.
Islington, meanwhile, stated it was buying back more ex-council homes sold off under Right-to-Buy and would use “more robust” temporary fixes where it was “not economical” to replace windows.
Speaking to the LDRS, Lambeth Council said it was “extremely sorry services provided did not meet our usual high standards” and assured it had compensated residents affected, made sure work was completed and carried out reviews to learn from the cases. A spokesperson said the council now installed window restrictors to all empty properties above the ground floor.
The LDRS approached the other councils for additional comment but at the time of writing they had not responded.
