South London mum wins £6.5k after she was forced to sleep in same bed as son while council 'ignored' leaky roof for 5 years
A mum has won £6,500 from a South London council after it failed to fix her leaky roof for five years. The Housing Ombudsman - which deals with complaints about town hall landlords - found Lambeth Council spent a total of six years dragging its heels over an ongoing damp and mould problem in the unnamed woman’s flat. In one instance, the council took five months to act on a safeguarding enquiry from her son’s primary school about black mould and a broken window pane in the house. It was one of a catalogue of failures in the council’s handling of the case which led the woman and her son having to sleep in the same bed to keep warm because of dodgy windows elsewhere in the house. While workmen sent by the council tried to fix the problems, the flat was left in darkness, surrounded by scaffolding, for over two years. Meanwhile, the woman’s son developed what she described as “extreme eczema,” which his school reported was visible on his hands and body. He also started using an inhal...