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| Campaigning for A Better Council |
Southampton Independents began its campaign on fire safety in early 2017. During that campaign, we uncovered a whole raft of issues across Southampton on housing more generally. Many of these problems had been around for a while, and Council tenants were increasingly frustrated.
When we took BBC Radio 5 Live's investigative reporter Adrian Goldberg to the tower blocks in International Way in Weston, he was shocked. He filed this video, with Andrew Pope showing him around.
As well as the fire safety issues, we observed damp and mould. This had previously been reported by tenants of Canberra House in International Way. As the Daily Echo reported, the Council had "vowed" to address the damp and mould, and the fire safety issues.
Yet eight years later, the Council's own report still shows "high risk" issues on damp and mould.
Southampton City Council's own Director of Housing has admitted that the Council is a bad landlord, quoted in writing in the Council's own report:
"Over the last few years, our performance relating to our housing landlord function has fallen below an acceptable standard. We must and will do better."
We have written to the Cabinet Member for Housing, Labour Councillor Andy Frampton, on several issues. We still have not received any response.
So now we are revealing more shameful information, from the Council's own reports that we have obtained, about damp and mould, to add to:
- the huge cost of empty properties and delays to fill the properties with tenants
- the Council's failure to deal with high risk fire safety failures, and
- the change to Council policy to allow non-Southampton residents to go on the waiting list.
We quote directly from the Council's own report:
"The high risk exception was raised in relation to sample testing of 25 damp and mould cases establishing 8/25 did not include photographs alongside the surveyor’s findings, 6/25 did not have a surveyor report on file and for 10/25, testing was unable to evidence the authority contacting tenants to follow up on damp and mould issues."
To interpret this:
- 32% of damp and mould cases did not provide photographic evidence
- 24% had no surveyor report to provide evidence
- 40% had no evidence that the Council as landlord had even followed up with tenants on damp and mould issues
Campaigner Andrew Pope says:
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| Daily Echo early 2017 on our fire safety campaign quoting Andrew Pope |
"We will try again to get answers from Councillor Andy Frampton, and have contacted the BBC and other media to ask that they cover this, as they have covered private sector damp and mould issues following the terrible deaths and illnesses caused by bad landlords.
It is also nauseating to see Southampton Labour MPs like Darren Paffey, who himself was approving housing spending in the Council Cabinet for years, focus in a recent BBC report by Emily Hudson on BBC South Today only on private sector blocks when his own Labour Council is still failing as a landlord.
It's selective representation and party political myopia when his job is to protect all his constituents from all bad landlords, including the Council."
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| Standing Up For Sotonians |