Lewisham Council is to be investigated by the Housing Ombudsman over ‘repeated failings’ with its housing.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman boss, said he was concerned about recurring faults found in complaints about the local authority landlord.

The Housing Ombudsman, which deals with complaints about social housing providers, said it had found failings in 85 per cent of cases related to the council in the last 12 months. With complaints related to leaks, damp and mould, failings were found in 90 per cent of cases.

In addition, the public body said it had identified 16 serious failings in how the council dealt with housing issues in the last 12 months. The Housing Ombudsman said the investigation would allow it to establish if the faults found in the complaints were a sign of wider failings by the council.

Depending on the results of the investigation, the Housing Ombudsman has the power to order the council to improve specific policies and practices, or it can carry out further scrutiny to identify the root cause of a particular issue. The findings of the initial investigation will be shared with England’s social housing watchdog.

In December 2023, Lewisham Council referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing over concerns about the state of its housing stock. It asked the watchdog to examine if the 13,500-plus homes the council manages meet the minimum standard required. Lewisham also asked the regulator to determine whether its own repair service is up to scratch and whether its fire safety measures are sufficient.

In 2023, the council said that 17 per cent of its homes didn’t meet the minimum standard for social housing. But by 2027 that figure is expected to surge to 31 per cent as Lewisham diverts money from repairs to fire safety improvements.

Richard Blakeway said: “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.”

Lewisham Council said it welcomed the Housing Ombudsman’s investigation and said it was making improvements to its housing service, recent progress included more than halving its repairs backlog and increasing the number of repairs it carried out on time.

A spokesperson added: “We are carrying out a condition survey of all of our homes. We have so far surveyed 7,500 properties, over 50 per cent 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 reduced the call waiting time at our repairs booking contact centre from 27 minutes in April to six minutes in June. We have improved our response times for repairs complaints. 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.

“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 residents’ requests and we get ahead of problems before they cause an inconvenience, and giving our residents easier online access to our services.”