Flintshire on target for housing mould improvement after Ombudsman ruling
Key improvements in how Flintshire County Council deals with tenants’ mould complaints have been made after the authority was found guilty of maladministration.
By the end of the month all recommendations for improvements to the Housing and Communities Service’s response to mould and condensation complaints will have been actioned.
That was the latest update given by Monitoring Officer Gareth Davies in a Public Interest report drafted to update Flintshire’s Cabinet on the actions recommended by the Ombudsman.
The case involves a resident – referred to as Miss Y to protect her anonymity – who spent six years reporting damp and mould-related issues without an adequate repsonse from the authority.
According to the timeline Miss Y – a mum living with her children – moved into her council property in 2015.
She made multiple complaints about damp and mould-related issues over seven years, complaining not just about the effect on the property but about chest infections experienced by herself and her children, damaged clothing and furniture requiring them to be thrown out, stress and anxiety about the impact of living at the property and the negative impact on her work and her children’s education.
The council was aware of the issue when she moved in as the previous tenant had written a letter to the authority saying the walls were ‘black with damp’ in 2015.
Flintshire County Council failed to record observations relating to damp in its inspection report – it also failed to record whether Miss Y had confirmed she was happy with the property’s condition when she moved in.
In 2017 Miss Y made her first report of damp – Flintshire County Council attempted to visit her once two months later but she was not at home.
In 2020 she then complained that her living room door frame was rotten, but the authority simply replaced the door hinge. Over the next four years she would make nine separate reports of problems with the door.
In addition there were seven more complaints made over that period for cracks in walls, arounds windows, multiple leaks or water entering a bedroom and rising damp.
The Ombudsman’s investigations found the authority failed to keep good records and failed to identify numerous repair requests pointing to the same issue.
It added that Flintshire had failed to keep the property in good repair as is required under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 and there was inadequate ventilation in the kitchen and bathroom as required under the Welsh Housing Quality Standard.
Finally it found that towards the end of her tenancy at the property, Miss Y and her family had been left to live in the damp property for two months during the coldest, dampest time of the year.
It ruled that the authority should pay Miss Y an additional £1,258 and made a series of recommendations that Flintshire needed to make to ensure these problems do not happen to another tenant.
Among the Ombudsman’s recommendations were that the council develop a process to ensure repeated repair requests are identified, recorded and escalated and that possible common causes can be easily identified.
It also told the council to develop guidance on when Tenant Liaison Officers should be allocated, including an Equality Impact Assessment, develop a specific ‘decant’ policy that sets out the actions the council will take when it needs to temporarily move a tenant – detailing the responsibilities of both the council and the tenant – and review policies for conducting and accurately recording pre-letting inspections.
All this must be implemented by January 16, 2026 and this week the authority said it was on target to meet that deadline.
Vicky Clark, Chief Officer for Housing and Communities said: “We do dispute some of the findings in the Ombudsman report but we acknowledge that we didn’t respond to the defects as quickly as we would have liked.”
Housing Assets manager Shaun Davis added: “We’ve apologised to the tenant and accept there are a number of things that could have been done a lot better.
“We’ve had some briefing sessions with our officers with regard the importance of completing paperwork fully and now we undertake videos at termination and inspections.
“With regards the recommendations in the report a number of these were actioned a couple of years ago.
“We are on with a number of those remaining actions – we are just looking at the final drafts and then we’ll be pushing forward – and we continue to work closely with the Ombudsman.”
By Alec Doyle – Local Democracy Reporter
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