In eight days at the end of February, the housing watchdog upheld three separate complaints against Wandsworth Council. All three involve vulnerable residents. All three follow the same script: the council formally accepted a duty to help, and then stopped.
One family spent more than two years in a studio flat the council itself had declared unsuitable. One woman heard nothing from the council for nine months after it accepted she needed rehousing. One seriously ill man’s reassessment sat untouched for 18 weeks while he chased the council repeatedly and received no reply.
This is the sixth Putney.news investigation in our housing failures series. Previous stories documented failed repairs, regulatory downgrades, and a council that acknowledged problems only when external pressure forced it. These three rulings, from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO), add a new dimension: the same pattern now confirmed by a different watchdog, in homelessness and allocations cases as well as disrepair.
Nine months of nothing
Mrs X applied to Wandsworth for housing help in October 2023. The council accepted a formal homeless duty in March 2024, acknowledging her home was unsuitable. Between June 2024 and January 2025, the council made no contact with her and took no action on her case.
The council’s own account to the Ombudsman confirmed this: it had no record of contacting Mrs X or taking any action on her case across that nine-month period. She remained in accommodation the council knew was unsuitable, waiting.
Mrs X had previously turned down two offers. One was too far from the hospital that her son depended on. The other had damp. Neither refusal relieved the council of its duty to keep looking. It simply did not.
Mrs X only got movement when she complained in January 2025. The council reassessed her the following month, offered a property, and she moved in March 2025. The Ombudsman upheld the complaint and ordered a £500 payment for the distress and uncertainty caused by nine months of inaction. It also required the council, within three months, to put measures in place to monitor cases where a homeless duty has been accepted but temporary accommodation not yet provided.
The council told the Local Democracy Reporting Service it was “committed to providing appropriate temporary accommodation for those that need it” and was sorry for the distress. It had “paid the compensation in full.”
Two years in a flat declared unsuitable
Miss X and her two children were placed in a studio flat by Wandsworth in 2023. In June 2023, the council accepted the property was unsuitable. The legal requirement when a council reaches that conclusion is immediate: it must provide suitable accommodation. Miss X was not rehoused until September 2025, more than two years after placement and 15 months after the council’s own acceptance that the flat was unsuitable.
The Ombudsman applied a 12-month rule on how far back to investigate, since Miss X did not complain until June 2025. A payment was ordered for each month she remained in the unsuitable property from June 2024 to September 2025. The council was also required to review its process for when a property is identified as unsuitable.
The council’s response, also via the Local Democracy Reporting Service, was that it was “committed to providing safe, secure housing for those that need it most” and sorry that in this case it had not provided suitable accommodation. It had “made a payment to the family concerned” and was “reviewing processes to ensure this does not happen again.”
18 weeks, no update
Mr X has been on the Wandsworth housing register since 2023, in Band A, the highest priority category. In October 2024, new medical evidence was submitted on his behalf, asking the council to reassess his bedroom entitlement. Between October 2024 and March 2025, 18 weeks passed. Mr X chased in November, in December, and again with no response.
Statutory guidance suggests eight weeks is a reasonable timeframe for this kind of reassessment. The Ombudsman found the 18-week delay was fault. The finding was not that the council reached a wrong conclusion about Mr X’s housing need. It was entitled to seek its own medical advice and make its own judgement. The fault was that it told him nothing while it did so. As the Ombudsman put it: “When a decision is delayed pending further enquiries, it should provide a clear update explaining the reason for the delay and the expected next steps.” It did not.
Mr X’s case has a longer history. In September 2023 he was initially assessed for a two-bedroom property, then told the following month that was an error and he actually needed a studio. A review was requested in December 2023. By March 2024, the council had assessed him at one bedroom. The October 2024 new evidence was a further attempt to establish the two-bedroom need he had been arguing for. The council eventually accepted that need in August 2025, on the basis of his entitlement to full housing benefit, his need for overnight care, and the Equality Act. It had taken two years of escalation to get there.
The remedy in this case was an apology and a reminder to relevant housing staff about the update requirement. No financial payment was ordered.
The apology as a process
The council’s responses to the first two cases, issued weeks apart in response to different families with different failures, contain the same commitments in near-identical language. Both include a version of “we are committed to… reviewing our processes to ensure this does not happen again.”
Read alongside the four previous investigations in this series (which have produced the same promise from the council each time) that commitment has now appeared at least six times in response to documented housing failures. The October 2025 story, in which a family spent two years in grossly unsuitable accommodation and received a £10,384 Housing Ombudsman award, produced an identical assurance. So did the February 2026 case, in which a domestic abuse survivor was left in a room the council had been warned was unsuitable for four months after she gave birth.
When the same apology follows every different failure, the apology has become its own process.
What the series has found
Previous Putney.news investigations documented failures in repairs that cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands in deferred maintenance, cases of mould and disrepair in Wandsworth council homes, and a C3 regulatory downgrade by the Regulator of Social Housing. Those findings came largely from the Housing Ombudsman, which covers social housing disrepair. The three February rulings come from the LGSCO, which handles homelessness applications and allocations. Different watchdog, same institutional pattern.
Cllr Aydin Dikerdem is the Cabinet Member for Housing at Wandsworth Council. The LGSCO’s remedies in these three cases require the council to monitor open homelessness cases, review its suitability process, and remind staff about update requirements. Whether previous process review commitments have been implemented is an open question this series will pursue through the Freedom of Information Act.
What can you do?
If you believe Wandsworth Council has failed to act on your housing case, you have the right to complain formally. The council’s complaints process runs to two stages. If the stage two response is unsatisfactory, or if the council fails to respond within required timeframes, you can take your complaint to the LGSCO at lgo.org.uk, the same watchdog that ruled against the council in all three cases above. There is no charge for doing so.
Putney.news has submitted right of reply questions to Wandsworth Council on cases 25-004-338 and 24-023-261. The council’s statement on case 25-006-066, provided to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, is on record and included above.
