Damp homes

The request was successful.

Dear Harrogate Borough Council,

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

1. How many tenants (resident in homes for which you have responsibility for maintenance) did you have in financial year 2011-2012 (those who were tenants at any time of the year)?

2. How many complaints did you have from your tenants about damp or mould in their homes in financial year 2011-2012?

3. What was the estimated total cost of responding to those requests in financial year 2011-2012?

Questions regarding litigation costs:

1. How many cases referring to damp homes did you receive in the financial year 2011-2012?

2. What was the total cost (including court costs & fines) to you of defending those cases in the financial year 2011-2012?

Yours faithfully,

Graham Atherton

Directorate Support Springfield, Harrogate Borough Council

Dear Mr Atherton

 

In your email which was received by the Council on 19/9/2013, you asked
for the following information:

 

1. How many tenants (resident in homes for which you have responsibility
for maintenance) did you have in financial year 2011-2012 (those who were
tenants at any time of the year)?

 

2. How many complaints did you have from your tenants about damp or mould
in their homes in financial year 2011-2012?

 

3. What was the estimated total cost of responding to those requests in
financial year 2011-2012?

 

Questions regarding litigation costs:

 

1. How many cases referring to damp homes did you receive in the financial
year 2011-2012?

 

2. What was the total cost (including court costs & fines) to you of
defending those cases in the financial year 2011-2012?

 

In response, please find below the information from Harrogate Borough
Council:

 

1.    3883 tenancies at the end of 2011/12.

2.    Information not recorded and unavailable.

3.    Information not recorded and unavailable.

 

With regards to litigation costs the answers are:

 

1.    None

2.    None

 

We hope you are happy with our service.  But if you are not satisfied with
the way your request has been handled, please contact:

 

Freedom of Information Officer

Council Offices, Crescent Gardens, Harrogate, HG1 2SG

or email [1][Harrogate Borough Council request email]

 

The Council has an internal appeal system.  If your complaint is about the
decision which has been made you will usually be entitled to have your
case reviewed by an officer from a department which has not been involved
in the decision previously.

 

If, after their decision, you are still not happy, you may appeal to:

 

The Information Commissioner 

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, 

Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

Tel: 01625 545745    Fax: 01625 524510

e-mail: [2][email address]

website: [3]www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

 

Jo Maddock

Business Support Assistant (Directorate Support)

Department of Resources

Harrogate Borough Council

Springfield House

Kings Road

HARROGATE

HG1 5NX

Telephone: 01423 500600 ext 58262

Email: [4][email address] or
[5][email address]

Website: [6]www.harrogate.gov.uk

 

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Dear Harrogate Borough Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Harrogate Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Damp homes'.

I have requested information pertaining to the number of repairs due to damp or mould in your ~4500 residential properties. Other councils readily have this information, so I find it unlikely you do not have any of the information held.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...

Yours faithfully,

Graham Atherton

Alison Best, Harrogate Borough Council

Dear Mr Atherton

I refer to your request for a review of the way your request for
information relating  to damp conditions in the Council’s housing stock
 was handled . In an effort to provide help and assistance and to try and
alleviate the need for a formal appeal I confirm that I have contacted the
Council’s Department of Community Services   Operations Manager
(Contractor) who has provided the following comment in connection with
your request . He is happy to discus this with you either face to face or
over the telephone and if this is something that you think would be
beneficial  please contact me by telephone or via your own email address
 and I will let you have his contact details.

Comments are :-

  

The specific question asked was - How many complaints did you have from
your tenants about damp or mould in their homes in financial year
2011-2012?

 

‘Complaint’ was not defined so I took it to mean – ‘how often are we
contacted by our tenants about damp and mould?’ Damp and mould was also
not defined so I took it to mean all forms of damp and damp related
symptoms. That is rising damp, penetrating damp, damp resulting from
fabric or service leaks and damp arising from the  way a building is used,
for example, condensation.

 

Reports are generally made by our tenants to the dedicated Repair Line
whereupon the tenant will be asked questions so that the Property Support
Officer can attempt a diagnosis over the phone. Often, a diagnosis can be
made in cases of condensation / black mould and advice given over the
phone so as to provide our tenant with the fastest possible solutions and
help. Often, an advice leaflet is also sent out to provide the tenant with
reference material and more in depth advice. We do not record on our
database where we have only given advice to tenants.

 

Where, for whatever reason, a diagnosis is not possible over the phone,
the Property Support Officer would arrange for a Maintenance Surveyor to
inspect the property. This would be recorded on our database but we are
not able to distinguish between inspection requests raised for damp or any
other issues – so we are unable to run a report which would identify those
inspection requests.

 

The inspection may result in advice being given or may result in work
being ordered – either utilising our In-House Maintenance Team or one of
many external contractors. Repairs may take many forms of remedial action
– fitting extractor fans, lowering ground levels, repairing damp proof
courses, pointing, roof repairs, plumbing repairs, plaster repairs etc. –
the list is not endless but extremely difficult to refine. So, whilst we
do record all the work done to our homes on our data base, we are unable
to run a report which would identify a repair done to rectify an incidence
of damp compared to a non-damp related repair. For example, we could
identify how many extractor fans we have replaced in a financial year, but
not identify why it was replaced – it may be the fan was at the end of its
expected life, it may have been damaged or it may need replacing because a
tenant had problems with condensation.

 

In general, our stock is in very good condition with high levels of
investment. By way of illustration, we attained the governments decency
standard in 2009 – a year ahead of the target date. It may be that other
Councils and Registered Social Landlords monitor and keep records of
complaints about dampness because they lack the funds or resources to
react to them. Because we are better placed to respond to issues around
dampness and have relatively few complaints, we feel there is no need to
monitor these reports any more than we need to monitor reports about, for
example, roof repairs or electrical faults.

 

If you are not happy with this response and still require a formal review
please let me know

 

Alison Best

Legal Services

Council Offices

Harrogate

HG1 2SG

[email address]

Telephone: 01423 556031

Fax: 01423 556010

www.harrogate.gov.uk

 

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