Watchdog says Town Hall ‘positivity’ blocked ‘real reflection’ over housing failures

Housing ombudsman Richard Blakeway. Photograph: Housing Ombudsman

The social housing ombudsman has warned Hackney Council that its “positivity” around improving housing services led to “multiple missed opportunities”.

On Thursday (22 May), the regulator released its annual report into the borough, finding “several areas of poor service delivery”, including repairs, leaks, damp and mould, and complaints-handling.

Ombudsman Richard Blakeway said: “The pressure to improve has sometimes created a ‘positivity prism’ which has overstated changes compared to the reality experienced by residents.

“This could go some way to explain the root cause of the landlord’s problems.

“[The council] must ensure its mindset does not prevent real learning and reflection, including from complaints, to achieve its ambitions.”

The watchdog added that none of the residents who complained had asked “for anything more than the minimum they should expect”.

In one case, an elderly resident went without heating and hot water for seven weeks.

The probe was triggered by a mounting level of maladministration rulings from the watchdog, with poor practice found in the vast majority (79 per cent) of complaints.

It drew on 56 cases between October 2023 and June 2024.

The ombudsman recognised the local authority, like others, faced “significant challenges”, including insufficient budgets, a shortage of homes amid demand pressures, and an ageing housing stock.

Blakeway also acknowledged the impact of the 2020 cyber attack on Hackney’s housing systems.

But though the Town Hall saw the majority of its problems around information-handling as stemming from the hack, the regulator said these were “more accurately described” as failings around scrutiny and oversight.

The council’s bonus scheme may have given staff a “perverse incentive” to prematurely mark repairs complete, the ombudsman said.

On damp and mould, the local authority had “a distorted view of reality and misguided reassurance, committing resources without fully understanding whether they would address problems identified”.

The investigation found that in almost every complaint, the council missed its deadline for responding.

Hackney Council provides and manages over 30,000 housing units.

The report’s publication comes roughly two weeks after the borough’s cabinet member for housing, Clayeon McKenzie, resigned from his role after Hackney mayor Caroline Woodley’s mini-reshuffle.

The borough’s new housing chief, Guy Nicholson, said: “On behalf of the council, I apologise for this shortfall and reassure both tenants and the ombudsman that Hackney Council is fully committed to improving the service it provides as a landlord to the homes it has responsibility for.”

He added that the watchdog had looked at a range of tenants’ cases which predated the rollout of the council’s own “internally-led service improvement plan”.

He noted it was “heartening” the ombudsman recognised officers’ commitment and the work done to implement changes, including a new approach for supporting those with additional needs.

Hackney’s Green group told the Citizen the report was a “brutal indictment of Hackney Labour’s housing failure”.

“For years, we were told things were improving and lessons were being learned. This report exposes that as fiction,” they said.

“What we had was a broken system, papered over with a misleading ‘positivity prism’, also known as gaslighting.”

Hackney Independent Socialist Group (HISG) said the findings “reflected a culture of cover-up” and urged the mayor to reverse her decision to give Cllr Nicholson the housing brief, alongside his regeneration portfolio and deputy mayor duties.

They said the Labour-run administration’s decision to choose only its own party councillors to lead every one of the council’s scrutiny commissions meant the council was “effectively marking its own homework”.

They added that there were members outside the Labour group to whom the mayor could turn to help deliver “meaningful change”.

Hackney Labour told the Citizen that Mayor Woodley had made housing and homelessness her “top priority” precisely because of the scale of challenges in the borough.

Their spokesperson added that Hackney had last year helped draft a report, backed by more than 100 councils, urging the government to bring in a “fair and sustainable” model for local authorities’ housing revenue accounts (HRA).

These are ring-fenced funding pots for the management, maintenance and repair of social homes.

The Labour spokesperson said: “Deputy Mayor Guy Nicholson has an overview of housing that cuts across planning and place-making, and will do everything he can to ensure that our housing stock is not left behind.”

The Town Hall listed a raft of actions it was taking in light of the report, including speeding up inspections, hiring more contractors and launching an Alternative Dispute Resolution Scheme.

Satisfaction around repairs had also risen sharply from 59 per cent in 2022 to over 77 per cent by December 2024, the council added.

The local authority is also undertaking a “wholesale reorganisation” of the housing service to make it fit for purpose by the end of October, and plans to invest £48m in its housing stock by next March.

But it warned that without national policy changes to support improvements, London boroughs will need to cut spending by £264m in real terms by 2028 to avoid shrinking their housing budgets.

The ombudsman’s report is available to read in full here.