London authority self-referred to the Regulator of Social Housing in December last year over concerns about whether it was providing decent homes
The Housing Ombudsman Service will carry out a special investigation into Lewisham Council after complaints against the provider revealed a high maladministration rate, as well as a “significant number” of severe maladministration findings and some compliance issues.
Lewisham Council’s maladministration rate for the last 12 months stands at 85% and the Ombudsman has issued 16 severe maladministration findings. Its maladministration rate for leaks, damp and mould is 90%.
This investigation follows Lewisham Council’s self-referral to the Regulator of Social Housing in December of the previous year, due to a potential breach of the consumer standards and concerns about the condition of some of its housing stock.
The council’s self-referral asked the regulator to examine whether it is providing decent homes, running an efficient repairs service, and completing fire safety actions within acceptable timescales.
Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “Complaints are an essential tool for landlords to learn and improve and can help landlords navigate challenging periods.
“For several months we have been concerned at the repeated failings we have seen in the landlord’s complaints, particularly involving property conditions.
”We have given the landlord the opportunity to address some of these issues through our orders and will now progress to a further investigation. This will involve engaging with the landlord and its residents about some of the issues we have seen.
“Decent, safe and secure social housing has never been more important and the learning from this report will help the landlord to improve the experiences of residents.”
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In response, Lewisham Council said: “We welcome this investigation as we continue to work to improve our services for residents. Our Housing Service has been going through big changes and we know it is in need of improvement.
“We referred ourselves to the Regulator of Social Housing for a potential breach of its consumer standards in December 2023, and we intend to be open and transparent with both Regulator and Ombudsman until we satisfy their requirements.”
The council’s statement added: “We have made progress in some areas, though we still have a long way to go.”
The local authority’s improvement plans focus on repairs, damp and mould issues, customer service, and system upgrades. The council reported reducing its backlog of repairs from over 18,000 to fewer than 9,000 “in recent months.”
In addition, the completion rate for routine and emergency repairs on time improved from 57% and 33% in April to 67% and 58% in June.
The council said: “We will continue reducing the backlog to put us in a better position to plan ahead and know what resources we need, so we can further improve our turn-around times.”
To address damp and mould issues, the council is carrying out condition surveys in all of its homes. So far, it has surveyed 7,500 properties, more than half of the total.
The council stated that “this is already enabling us to identify buildings prone to damp and mould, even where it hasn’t been reported, and plan refurbishment. We have recruited additional specialist damp and mould surveyors to work towards a target of performing a mould wash within 24 hours of it being reported by a resident.”
Lewisham has also reduced the call waiting time for its repairs booking contact centre from 27 minutes in April, to six minutes in June.
The statement added: “We have improved our response times for repairs complaints: For Stage 1 complaints we met the ten-day target for 83% of complaints in June, against 63% in April. For Stage 2 (20 days) we improved to 72% from 45% in the same period. We have begun a comprehensive training programme for staff who respond to complaints to make sure our residents always get fair, clear and polite responses.”
The council is also upgrading the central computer programme and database its staff use to manage the housing service. “This will help us to make sure we don’t lose track of our resident’s requests and we get ahead of problems before they cause an inconvenience,” the statement said.
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