After years of suffering with anti-social behaviour on an east Brighton housing estate, a resident is expecting a final ruling on council inaction.
Lee Catt found that his “cards were marked” by Brighton and Hove City Council because he complained about drug dealers and anti-social behaviour on the Craven Vale housing estate.
After going through two stages of complaints with the council without success, the housing ombudsman has ruled that there was “maladministration”.
The verdict covers the council’s response to anti-social behaviour, reports of discrimination, concerns about communal cleaning and associated complaints.
On Tuesday 17 December the ombudsman ruled that a senior manager should apologise to Mr Catt and the council is required to pay £550 in compensation.
The council is also required to introduce a vulnerability policy or strategy.
The ombudsman’s adjudicator Katherine Brown criticised the council for failing to provide its stage two complaint responses.
She also upheld a finding that the council did not respond “in a week or so” despite receiving reports of a neighbour leaving faeces in the communal area of the block on Wednesday 20 September 2023.
The area was jet washed on Friday 13 October 2023.
The council said that it had already offered Mr Catt £500 in compensation over the cleaning issues.
But Ms Brown said: “It was appropriate for the landlord to apologise and compensate the resident for the failings it acknowledged. Having reviewed the amount awarded by the landlord, I find this was adequate to provide redress for these failings.
“However, a finding of reasonable redress cannot be made, as the landlord did not offer any redress for its failure to follow up on the resident’s concern about cleaning in the block, its ASB handling failures or the impact of failing to make adequate reasonable adjustments for the resident.
“As such, it was appropriate for the ombudsman to offer further compensation for these failings.”
Mr Catt, sent the council a “subject access request” – requiring the council to disclose its internal communications about him – after noticing that he was treated differently and services were being withdrawn after his complaints.
One issue that he raised was that cleaners were skipping the stairwell in his block.
The subject access request showed that council officials wanted to “push back” on complaints and regular communication with him even though he was a victim of anti-social behaviour.
Both his and a neighbour’s cases are being reviewed to establish if discrimination has played a role because they both have protected characteristics under the 2010 Equality Act.
His neighbour also made a subject access request which contained the same information as Mr Catt’s. The Information Commissioner’s Office found a breach of data rights.
In the past year, Mr Catt and his neighbour have escalated their complaints. These have been the subject of eight data breaches, with the council mixing their information and including information from other neighbours’ complaints.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has also heard a recording of a senior council official saying that the council would protect itself from complaints rather than deal with the problem.
In the recording, which has been sent to council leader Bella Sankey and chief executive Jess Gibbons, the official said: “They do this. This organisation does this to all sorts of different people.
“I’m sure if you talk to colleagues of colour, they would say exactly the same thing. That people don’t acknowledge the pain, the hurt, the mistreatment because they don’t want to admit it, because then they would be racist.
“They would be saying actually we are treating this black colleague differently to a white colleague. We’re treating this transgender colleague different to a CIS colleague.”
Both Councillor Sankey and Ms Gibbons have received regular emails from Mr Catt and his neighbour about their continuing grievances.
Mr Catt said: “We’ve asked them why do they keep lying when we have given them all the evidence to substantiate our complaints.
“All they do is come back and shut us down. If, in the very beginning, they just held their hands up and said we’re very sorry, what do we need to do to fix this, we wouldn’t be in the situation.
“It’s because of the constant lying and covering up that the situation has got bigger and bigger. Ultimately, we have paid the price.
“How can an organisation fix its issues if its action is to shut things down.”
Mr Catt and his neighbour were told that there was a culture of change in the housing team but the system was designed to shut down complaints.
After speaking with people from other parts of Brighton and Hove, Mr Catt is now supporting them with their complaints about anti-social behaviour.
He said: “There are other estates that are a year behind us with their complaints about anti-social behaviour.
“It’s like a blueprint the council has, a format they follow. They’ve had their complaints not dealt with but individuals have been removed.
“They’ll have a period of quiet but, as soon as they complaint again, they’ll be ignored, just as we were.”
Mr Catt said that he expected to hear the final ruling from the ombudsman at any time.
The council said: “The housing ombudsman has yet to make a final decision and had invited further comments from the council with a deadline of (Tuesday) 31 December.
“The council made additional representations ahead of that deadline and we are now awaiting the final decision.
“We will not comment further at this time other than to say we will comply fully with any orders made by the ombudsman once the final decision is issued.”
There was me thinking Craven Vale was a brand of filtered milk, not a grotty housing estate.
You live and learn !
The head of complaints should be sacked. This council is totally inept when it comes to tenancy services, especially around complaints. They simply try and wear people down.
Quelle suprise, the Leader of the Council was sent details and they didn’t do anything and the residents’ experience is “All they do is come back and shut us down.”
Sadly, this type of thing is common place with the way the council handles complaints – often complaints are not logged correctly and the council frequently don’t follow their own complaints process properly. That’s when you’d hope that councillors would listen to residents and try and help and intervene, it sounds in this case they had zero interest in bothering to do that.
I hope BHCC uses this situation as an opportunity to push for systemic improvements within the council. Addressing drug dealing and anti-social behaviour has historically been a slow and challenging process, often taking a long time from opening a complaint to reaching a final outcome. The Housing Report also highlights that very few cases of anti-social behaviour result in notices to quit. Let’s hope this case sparks meaningful change in the way these issues are addressed.