Residents left with mould and fungi in homes after large landlord’s repairs failings

In one of the cases, a resident of a two bedroom ground-floor flat reported a possible leak affecting a wall of her child’s bedroom in February 2021. Despite operatives attending and identifying an outdoor tap as a possible cause, further inspections were not carried out and the problem persisted.

After the resident continued to pursue the issue, surveyors visited and logged necessary repairs, but these were closed without action, leaving no jobs on the system to be followed up.

In several contacts during summer and early autumn 2022, the resident told Guinness that her children had developed asthma, and that mould had spread into their beds, toy boxes, wardrobes and carpet.

She also made formal complaints to Guinness over the same period, with the association eventually offering several hundreds of pounds in compensation. But by the time the situation was reported to the ombudsman in September 2023, it had not been resolved.

In a second case, a resident with a history of ill health, who lived in a two bedroom Guinness flat with her family, reported a leak into her bedroom in January 2020.

While a job was raised, no record was made of the outcome. By November 2020, a complaint had been made to the local authority, which wrote to Guinness, warning that the damp had caused rot, and mushrooms to grow, in the property. Despite the Citizens Advice Bureau becoming involved during that winter, the issue – related to damaged drainage pipes – was not addressed adequately.

By July 2023, when the resident spoke to the ombudsman, the leak had still not been fixed and she said she had been unable to use her bedroom for two years. The watchdog identified a series of failures by Guinness around completing repairs, communicating, complaint-handling and following its own policies and procedures.

The other two cases where severe maladministration was found also concerned failures by Guinness to complete repairs.

In one, a family that included vulnerable children experienced a bird infestation in their roof after 10 months of delays, caused, in part, by a poor changeover between contractors. In the other, a resident and her children were left “freezing” during winter and without an adequate bathroom, with the landlord wrongly claiming works had been completed.

Mr Blakeway said the poor condition of homes “dominates our casework” and that the four Guinness cases “speak to many of the failings and missed opportunities we see”.

He said this included inspections not carried out early enough or repairs not being actioned afterwards, poor record-keeping, and failing to respect residents by communicating or updating them.

“Particularly concerning is that many of the issues we investigated in these cases were ongoing at the point of our decision, despite the landlord knowing some repairs were incomplete,” Mr Blakeway added.

“Our orders mean that appropriate actions have been taken and residents are now living in more habitable homes. But this is another example of the landlord missing opportunities to put things right.

“Underpinning many of the failings was also a lack of robust knowledge and information management, and we would urge the landlord and others in the sector to familiarise themselves with our Spotlight report on [damp and mould] to drive improvements for residents,” he said.

While Guinness was not one of the landlords the Spotlight report identified as among the worst performing, its practices were criticised in a follow-up focus on damp and mould last November.

A Guinness spokesperson told Inside Housing the association was “deeply sorry for the occasions on which we have let our residents down” and that the organisation recognised “we should have done better”.

“We welcome the ombudsman’s feedback and we have taken the learnings from these determinations to help us improve how we serve our residents,” the spokesperson said.

In a learning statement published alongside the watchdog’s findings, the landlord said it had made significant improvements to its services since 2021, including reviewing arrangements with contractors, delivering more repairs in-house and investing in complaints-handling and record-keeping.