THE Housing Ombudsman has revealed a council tenant was left feeling depressed as she faced a third winter without repairs being made to the leaking roof of her home.

Last month the Gazette revealed the tenant was awarded £2,000 after the ombudsman found there was “serious maladministration” by Tendring Council following complaints about the repairs.

The council had offered the tenant, who lives in a Grade II listed council property, just £100 after they were forced to deal with lengthy and avoidable delays and water damage.

The repairs, including a leaking roof, rotten window frame, blown plaster and damaged artex, had initially been reported in 2019 and were still not fully resolved in late 2021.

The ombudsman said when the resident complained about the lack of repair work, the landlord did not acknowledge or properly address her concerns.

"The resident said she felt angry, frustrated and depressed at the prospect of having to endure another winter without the repairs being completed," the ombudsman said this week.

"She said the landlord’s response to her complaint did not demonstrate that it had considered the effect of the delayed repairs on her."

The ombudsman found severe maladministration for the landlord’s handling of the repairs, maladministration for its complaint handling and service failure for its record keeping.

Richard Blakeway, from the Housing Ombudsman, said: “It is a significant concern that in late 2021 the landlord still appears to be attending to repairs initially reported in 2019.

"There were missed opportunities during this time to fully respond to the resident’s concerns and provide a more detailed explanation of the action it had taken to progress the repair together with an idea of how much longer the works may take."

The ombudsman ordered the council to pay £2,110 compensation, issue a further apology, carry out a final inspection of the property and provide a plan of action.

Paul Honeywood, the council's cabinet member for housing, said: “On behalf of the council I would like to wholeheartedly apologise again to our tenant for our failure to provide the quality service they have every right to expect, and the poor way in which we then handled their complaint.

“I have taken this issue up with officers to ensure that lessons have been learnt and our systems have been improved to ensure we provide a high-quality housing service to the more than 3,000 homes in our stock.

“As well as commencing an overall review of the repairs process to look at what other improvements could be made, we have taken a number of steps already to address the issues highlighted by the Ombudsman’s report, for which we are grateful.

“These include implementing new IT systems to better record and track property inspections, appointment of a new maintenance contractor and development of an in-house team following the winding up of the previous supplier, and further training on complaints handling.

“We are proud that for at least ten years this is the first report from the Housing Ombudsman indicating maladministration by TDC as a landlord – but even one case is too many and we will do our utmost to ensure the lessons learnt from this are implemented.”