Wandsworth Council won a court order in March to remove a violent tenant from a housing block on Fownes Street, Battersea, after more than a year of threats and intimidation towards neighbours. Sixteen weeks later, it has still not enforced it.
On Sunday, the tenant’s partner, Lee Preston, was arrested for kicking in a neighbour’s front door and smashing a window at the block. Despite police promises and witness statements, he was released within 48 hours and was back at the address by Tuesday, residents say.
It is just the latest incident in an escalating situation that has generated at least 19 police reference numbers, four arrests and four court hearings since December. It is also the third time in just over a year that the council has repeated a failure it has promised, in public, to fix.
The door on this occasion was damaged badly enough on Sunday that one resident and his wife were briefly unable to get out of their own home. The repair bill came to £315. Previous incidents have included a neighbours window being smashed in while a child was asleep in the same room; threatening messages and door knocks; objects – including a radiator and knives – hurled into neighbours’ gardens; water flooding from taps left on; and constant yelling, banging and fighting at all hours.
It has been going on for 18 months. Tenants with children have already left their homes in response. Others who have either bought their flat or have lived there for decades continue to fight to get the council to act and evict its violent and disturbed tenant.
How a possession order from March still means nothing in July
The possession order was granted on 23 March. It followed a year of threats and intimidation that led to an injunction against the tenant, Kevin Stratford, the previous December. Soon after, the council said it intended to seek his eviction.
But the order has sat unused since March, and the pattern of incidents it was meant to end has continued regardless. Residents say the council’s own approach to enforcement has been fragmented from the start. At a hearing on 20 February, Putney.news reported that the council decided against a breach finding, despite months of evidence residents had already compiled.
The council has repeatedly asked residents to supply evidence and footage – they had filmed dozens of encounters and provided incident reports and witness statements – but even though council employees have witnessed some of the incidents first hand, they have still failed to act.
One persistent complaint has been how Stratford and Preston use the drainpipe on the outside of the building to climb up to the first floor – either because Stratford has lost his keys to the enter the building or because Preston is not allowed keys due to a court order against him. Eventually, the drainpipe failed and the council removed it. It did not remove its tenant however and on 6 March, Stratford fell while attempting to climb the building’s exterior. A Wandsworth housing officer, John Thompson, confirmed in writing three days later that he had watched the incident live on CCTV.
At least six named council officers have handled the case since December, alongside a solicitor from a shared legal service. No single person appears to have owned the case.
A promise already broken once
This is not the first time Wandsworth has been told, in public, that its failure to act has caused severe repercussions.
In July 2025, national press coverage followed the case of a different Wandsworth tenant, Drina Gray, who subjected her neighbours to threats and criminal damage for over a year while the council simply failed to act.
In response to strong and explicit criticism of Wandsworth Council by the judge in that case, the then cabinet member for housing, Cllr Aydin Dikerdem, promised things would change: “We accept that we could have acted more swiftly.” He committed to changes in how the council managed antisocial behaviour cases, promising “actions are taken more promptly and that complainants are kept updated.” Those promises have proven hollow.
Putney.news has asked questions of the council, Cllr Dikerdem and the local Falconbrook councillors – former leader of the council Cllr Simon Hogg and Cllr Kate Stock – on four occasions over the course of the past year. None have ever responded. Only when a magistrate ordered the council to provide Putney.news with an update on the case did we receive one – and even that came more than a week after we have already reported on the outcome. This has been going on for nearly two years.
Same problem lead to a death in 2012
The Drina Gray case is not the only one. Another, even more concerning case, demonstrates that Wandsworth Council has a culture of inaction. The council is legally required to report on incidents where a person has died as a result of abuse, violence or neglect by a relative, intimate partner or member of the same household. An independent chair is then commissioned to lead a review panel and the council is expected to publish the results. It does so on a little noticed part of its website.
A 2014 Wandsworth domestic homicide review [pdf], examining a fatal attack by a council tenant with severe mental illness, found that communication between the agencies involved “was considered to be poor and in need of significant improvement.”
The parallel is closer than a shared finding. Before that killing of a “Mrs CR” in 2012, the person responsible had been the subject of two separate antisocial behaviour cases opened by his housing provider, after neighbours reported disturbing behaviour linked to his mental health. The review found that when the housing provider tried to raise the alarm, it could not get the mental health team to engage or take ownership of the risk. It is the same shape of failure residents describe at Fownes Street: a landlord flags a risk, and no single agency picks it up.
In the most recent witness statement, residents of Fownes St described how they had begun to fear for their lives. Back in December, after his wife had been physically assaulted and the council’s response was to ask for yet more evidence, a different resident told us: “I don’t know what kind of evidence they want: a dead body?”
The cost of doing the council’s own job
Residents have spent months compiling the evidence the council might otherwise have gathered itself: a 17-incident chronology submitted ahead of the March hearing, formal escalation emails, and a petition to councillors in March. A follow-up estate visit with local councillor Cllr Kate Stock was arranged for April; she never turned up.
This is not a dispute between two neighbours. The constant anti-social behaviour affects between 10 and 20 households, spanning Fownes Street and Temple House opposite.
They have stopped trusting the council or the police. One told Putney.news he had agreed to give a named witness statement in court but then withdrew it days later.
“The more I think about it, the more I realise it does not make sense to me to risk being stabbed or attacked by the offenders as a revenge for acting against them in court.” They offered the council an anonymous statement instead.
Another described the sequence that led to Sunday’s arrest: “We were resistant to providing a witness statement given we may have to appear in court in front of this guy. Police convinced us to provide a statement despite the huge safety risks involved, claiming this would help keep him in jail. After 2 days he is out and roaming around the neighbourhood.”
On the night of 11 July, before the door was kicked in, a resident called police over prolonged shouting and banging. They were told the incident “wasn’t considered an emergency” and redirected to the non-emergency line. A separate call to the ambulance service that night was met with a quoted wait of five hours.
What happens next
A further court hearing is listed for 22 July. Residents’ understanding is that it may concern a separate injunction against Preston himself, distinct from the existing order against Stratford. We have so far been unable to confirm that and the council has, again, failed to respond to any queries about the case.
Putney.news put the full sequence of events to Wandsworth Council, the Metropolitan Police, Falconbrook’s two ward councillors, and the council’s cabinet member for housing, Cllr Matthew Corner, on 14 and 15 July. After the Met police promise to provide a statement, we held back publication for a day; no response arrived.
The only person who has responded is the local MP, Marsha de Cordova. She places the blame squarely on the police and the council.
“Having raised this issue multiple times with both the Council and local police, the fact that this issue is continuing to spiral just isn’t good enough for the residents of Fownes Street.
Marsha de Cordova MP
I urge both the Council and police to redouble their efforts and work at pace to resolve this issue. The safety and security of our community in Battersea is of vital importance to me.
It is vital that the police do everything in its power to achieve this.”
Putney.news will continue to follow this story.
Residents who are Wandsworth tenants or leaseholders can complain about the council’s handling through the Housing Ombudsman Service (0300 111 3000).
Anyone raising concerns about the council’s duty to act on antisocial behaviour affecting a neighbour, rather than as a direct tenant complaint, can approach the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which lists delay and failure to properly consider evidence as valid grounds for complaint. The council’s own Stage 2 complaints process needs to be tried first.
