For Mrs X, the nightmare began with an eviction notice in June 2023. What followed was a two-year ordeal that would see her family trapped in legal limbo, traumatised by a terrifying incident in their home, and repeatedly failed by the very system designed to protect them.
This week, the Local Government Ombudsman delivered a damning verdict on Wandsworth Council’s handling of her homelessness case, ordering the authority to pay her £10,384.61 and overhaul its procedures.
It’s the fifth time in four months the council has been forced to apologise by independent investigators – revealing a pattern of institutional failure where reviews aren’t really reviews at all, but bureaucratic hurdles, and where officials repeatedly insist they got it right until they discover they were wrong all along.
A system that forgot the basics
When Mrs X’s landlord served her with a Section 21 notice – a “no-fault” eviction giving tenants two months to leave – she did what she was supposed to do: she approached Wandsworth Council for help. The Council assessed her situation and accepted it had a duty to help prevent her becoming homeless.
Then the two months passed.
When an eviction notice runs out, it’s reasonable to assume you have to leave immediately. But under the law, a landlord cannot force you out. They have to go to court, get a possession order from a judge, then get bailiffs to physically evict you – a process that can take months. So tenants often stay in their homes after notices expire, waiting for the legal process to unfold while looking for another place.
But just because you can stay doesn’t mean you should – and the law requires councils to check: is it actually reasonable for this person to keep living here?
If it’s safe and there’s time, the council can continue to help them search for a new home while they stay put. If not – it’s unsafe or bailiffs are imminent – the council must offer emergency accommodation.
But in this case, Wandsworth Council didn’t ask that question and the Ombudsman found no record of any assessment.
Despite having contacted the council to ask for help and advice, Mrs X was left in limbo and was not told what her rights were. She was advised by the council to stay in the home; when she reported feeling unsafe, she was told the space was habitable and so she should stay.
The Ombudsman concluded that Wandsworth Council should have offered her emergency accommodation – something that eventually happened in June 2024 – eleven months later. It was a year of uncertainty and stress that the council was found at fault over.
The incident
It turned out that Mrs X had good reason to be worried. In January 2024, something happened in the flat below Mrs X’s property – serious enough that her entire family was evacuated and one member needed medical treatment. The Ombudsman’s report doesn’t specify what.
When a Council officer arrived at the scene, Mrs X says she was told bluntly: no support could be offered because she was a private tenant. That was wrong, the Ombudsman noted – the council has a legal duty to look after all its residents, not just those that are also its tenants. The result was that it left a vulnerable family without help at a frightening moment.
Mrs X reported the issue. The Council then visited twice and concluded the property was still habitable. Desperate to get out, she started sending the council copies of medical assessments – from GPs, from therapists – documenting the developing trauma.
Medical Evidence Ignored
Between January and July 2024, Mrs X submitted multiple clinical letters. Her family, the therapists stated, were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the incident combined with the uncertainty of their housing situation.
Yet when the Council’s medical advisor reviewed the evidence, their conclusion was there was it did not affect Mrs X’s suitability for accommodation. More letters arrived confirming diagnoses; the advisor maintained there was no issue.
She continued to ask for assistance. Then in October 2024, for unclear reasons, the Council suddenly reversed course.
It’s a pattern that runs through Mrs X’s case – and through other recent Ombudsman rulings against Wandsworth. Officials dig in, insist their initial judgment was correct, dismiss evidence to the contrary, then finally, when really pushed, discover they were wrong all along. The reviews aren’t really reviews – they’re bureaucratic hurdles designed to wear people down.
The Ombudsman was blunt: the Council had “failed to explain why it discounted the numerous clinical letters.” For Mrs X, it meant months of additional “avoidable uncertainty, distress, and time and trouble.”
A maze of bureaucratic failures
Throughout her case, Mrs X repeatedly pointed out errors in her Personal Housing Plans – the documents meant to guide her path out of homelessness. The Council acknowledged the mistakes but failed to correct them promptly.
The Council did repeatedly offer Mrs X properties – but they were all outside the borough. When she declined them, citing the distance from her work, officials pointed to their policy: accommodation can be up to 90 minutes travel time away.
Meanwhile, Mrs X was also asking about a council scheme offering properties at reduced rent so she could still live in Wandsworth. She requested help three times over six months. Two months after her last request, the Council explained that it didn’t add her to the scheme – she needed to self-refer.
The Council also took three months to refer her to a programme it was responsible for: its Private Rented Sector team, which could help her find alternative accommodation.
The failures mounted. Mrs X requested a review of a temporary accommodation offer – she didn’t think the place was safe. By law, the Council had eight weeks to complete it. It took 14 weeks.
Between September 2023 and July 2024, Mrs X made seven complaints.
The Financial Toll
All the while, Mrs X was still living in the property with an expired eviction notice. When her landlord took her to court, she became liable for his legal costs. In June 2024, facing sudden eviction, she paid for storage to hold her belongings.
In May 2025, nearly two years after her ordeal began, Mrs X told the Council she’d found private rented accommodation on her own.
But still unhappy about how she’d been treated, and having exhausted all alleyways within the council, Mrs X complained to the independent ombudsman.
When the Ombudsman began investigating, the Council made an extraordinary offer: it would reimburse Mrs X all the money she’d spent securing her private rental – deposit, advance rent, all of it.
The Ombudsman called it a remedy that “exceeds what I would normally recommend in the circumstances,” and said it would not recommend any further compensation. However, it did order the Council to apologise to Mrs X for what she experienced.
A Wandsworth Council spokesperson said: “Wandsworth Council is committed to providing safe, secure housing for those that need it. We’re sorry for the distress that Mrs X experienced and we have independently offered a payment of £10,384.61 to compensate her for the time she spent in private rented accommodation.
“We accept the ombudsman’s findings and have taken measures internally to prevent anything similar occurring, including training for staff. We are committed to learning from this experience to improve our processes.”
It’s a familiar refrain. The same “committed to learning” promise appeared after a domestic abuse survivor was left on night buses, after a care home resident died, and after a disabled student’s family spent a year fighting over a journey distance the Council got wrong three times.
For an authority “committed to learning,” the lessons don’t seem to stick.
A pattern that won’t break
This isn’t an isolated case. It’s the fifth time in four months that Wandsworth Council has been censured by an independent arbitrator – each time revealing the same institutional failures: don’t communicate, don’t help, insist you’re right until forced to admit you’re wrong.
In August, a domestic abuse survivor with serious medical conditions was left sleeping on night buses for two months while the Council sat on her case, demanding more medical evidence despite having everything needed to house her immediately. Her case officer disappeared for weeks. When emergency accommodation was finally offered in September, officials claimed it was triggered by her disclosure of domestic abuse – but they’d known about it since July.
That same month came the shocking neglect at Sherwood Grange care home, where a vulnerable man died after months of poor care. The Council closed his case without telling his family, leaving them with nobody to turn to when things went wrong. At a crucial safeguarding meeting, a Council officer attended but kept their microphone on mute “because they did not know what to say.”
And just weeks ago, the Ombudsman found the Council had confused a disabled student’s college with his old school—not once, not twice, but three times—wrongly refusing transport help for a 15-mile journey they insisted was only two miles. When he appealed, the Council kept no record of who attended the panel, what evidence they considered, or how they reached their decision.
Reading through Mrs X’s case alongside these others, what emerges isn’t isolated mistakes but systemic failure. The missing assessments, the delayed acceptance of duties, the dismissed clinical evidence, the inaccurate housing plans, the missed complaint deadlines – it’s part of a pattern.
As part of the settlement, Wandsworth Council must issue briefing notes to all housing staff, using Mrs X’s case as a cautionary example.
But the question isn’t whether the Council will learn – it’s whether it actually wants to.
The human cost
Behind the jargon and process is a family who spent two years not knowing where they would live. A mother who approached the system for help and found herself navigating an incomprehensible maze of failures. Children who witnessed a terrifying incident and then watched their mother fight for recognition that it had affected them.
The £10,384.61 Mrs X will receive covers her financial costs. What it cannot remedy is the psychological toll of uncertainty, of being told your trauma isn’t real enough, of filing complaint after complaint into a bureaucratic void.
For Mrs X, the fight is over. She has a home. She has been vindicated. And somewhere in Wandsworth’s housing department, officials are studying her case file as an example of how not to treat the borough’s most vulnerable residents.
The question now is whether the lessons will stick.
This story was first covered by local democracy reporter Charlotte Lilywhite.
