Southwark Council has been ordered to pay almost £10,000 in compensation to two residents after severe maladministration findings were issued by the Housing Ombudsman.
The findings relate to the local authority’s handling of a complaint about heating loss in winter from a pregnant resident with a young child. The issue took six months to resolve.
The second case concerned damp and mould in the home of a young family. This took 11 months to fix and the landlord refused requests for rehousing and compensation.
The Ombudsman ordered the council to pay £2,000 and £7,500 respectively in compensation.
A Southwark Council spokesperson said: ‘Both of these cases make for very difficult reading and we would like to apologise unreservedly for the distress caused to these families by our actions and processes.
‘As soon as the Ombudsman raised these with us, we made immediate changes to our processes to try to prevent such failures happening again.’
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