Ombudsman launches special investigation into Lewisham Council due to high failure rate in cases

30 July 2024

The Housing Ombudsman has launched a special investigation into Lewisham Council following a high maladministration rate, including a significant number of severe maladministration findings, and some compliance issues.

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The Ombudsman has the powers to do this under paragraph 49 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme.

The landlord’s maladministration rate for the last 12 months stands at 85% and the Ombudsman has issued 16 severe maladministration findings. The maladministration rate for leaks, damp and mould sits at 90%.

The Ombudsman also issued a wider order to the landlord under paragraph 54(f) of the Scheme in November 2023 regarding leaks, damp and mould but it has not yet received evidence of compliance with all parts of the order.

Given these circumstances, the Ombudsman will conduct a further investigation to establish if these complaints are indicative of wider failure within the landlord.

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.”

The Housing Ombudsman has a range of powers to address repeated service failure, improving resident experiences and reducing the need to complain. These powers can tackle issues within the complaints of an individual landlord or landlords, as well as the wider sector. These powers and the Ombudsman’s approach is set out in its systemic framework. It includes wider orders following an individual investigation, with the aim of improving landlord policy or practice, or further investigations to establish the root causes of repeated service failure.

The Ombudsman will share these findings with the Regulator of Social Housing as part of its work under the statutory Memorandum of Understanding.

Lewisham Council statement

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.

We have already made progress in some areas, though we still have a long way to go. Our improvement plans to tackle the issues raised in this investigation include these key focuses:

Repairs: In recent months we have reduced the backlog of repairs from more than 18,000 to fewer than 9,000. In the same period, we have improved how many routine and emergency repairs we are completing on time, from 57% and 33% in April to 67% and 58% in June. 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.
Damp and mould: We are carrying out a condition survey of all of our homes. We have so far surveyed 7,500 properties, over 50% of the total. 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.
Customer service: We have reduced the call waiting time at our repairs booking contact centre from 27 minutes in April to 6 minutes in June. 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.
Upgrading our systems: We are upgrading the central computer program and database our 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, and giving our residents easier online access to our services.