Council action over mouldy home complaint approved

A council which had to pay out £1,700 to a tenant who complained about mould in his home has acted properly in rectifying the issue, a meeting has heard. 

In January Great Yarmouth Borough Council was told it must hand over £1,700 in compensation to a tenant who spent years living in a home riddled with mould.

The compensation followed an investigation by the Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway, which found the council guilty of severe maladministration over the way it handled the case, and the subsequent work to remedy problems at the property in a village in the north of the borough.

Following the investigation, Great Yarmouth Borough Council said it had made changes to its procedures around major works and the monitoring of contractors and was working with the tenant - who cannot be named - to address their issues and had apologised to them.

On Tuesday, a meeting of the council's standards committee briefly discussed the affair and agreed that it was satisfied with the measures taken by the authority's housing team since the investigation.

The committee papers showed the tenant had then made a further complaint in January about the council not addressing the original complaint properly.

But the Housing Ombudsman said he was satisfied with the way the council had complied with its order to rectify the issues surrounding the mouldy home complaints process.

As well as the mould problem, the tenant had also reported concerns over works to their kitchen and rain water entering the property through doors and windows.

The council had made an initial payout of £500 to the tenant, before the investigation by the Ombudsman ordered it hand over another £1,700.

The standards committee said a full report on the council's response and the investigation is yet to be published in the public realm.

Tuesday's meeting heard that in the year 2021-22 there were eight complaints made to ombudsmen bodies concerning planning, trees, housing, council tax and the case of the mouldy home.

Five of the investigations were closed without any action and two were closed with no maladministration found but with further actions to be taken.

The two cases involving further actions to be taken involved a housing right to buy complaint and a housing complaint about the anti-social behavior of non-residents in communal areas.