Lewisham Council apologised for the “stress and inconvenience” caused to the family including pregnant Emily Black
A South London council has apologised to a family including a pregnant woman after it failed to fix a communal leak for four months.
Scott Black says he first complained to Lewisham Council about the leak, which originated from a communal pipe in their block of flats in Deptford, in February of this year.
Over the course of the next four months, Scott says he contacted the council’s emergency repairs team more than 10 times, but says no urgent action was taken to fix the leak until June.
Leaseholder Scott, his pregnant wife, Emily, and their toddler were forced to temporarily move out for a night during sweltering temperatures in June after the leak worsened and caused them to be without power.
Scott told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) it felt like “groundhog day” every time he called up the council about the leak. He said: “I’d call them every week and have exactly the same thing happen. I tried to escalate it especially when the damage wasn’t immediately apparent to us.
“It was more that our downstairs neighbours’ property was leaking a lot – I was helping downstairs more at the beginning because their flat was getting absolutely flooded every time it rained.”
By spring, Scott started to notice the plaster was coming up in his kitchen. When he looked into how much it would cost to repair the kitchen, he says he was told his electricity needed to be switched off because it was a fire risk.
When the council eventually came to fix the leak in June, Scott says it took around eight minutes to repair and was told it was caused by a limescale build-up.
Scott told the LDRS: “[When the leak was happening] my wife was coming to the end of her first trimester, so she was feeling very fatigued and nauseous.
“Just having to deal with the uncertainty and the speculation about how bad it could get was the most stressful thing, rather than what ended up being not too bad a night on a sofa.”
Scott says he feels “absolutely nothing has changed” since a Housing Ombudsman’s report into Lewisham Council, which found multiple problems with the way the council handles complaints and repairs.
The report, which was published in October 2025, also found issues with the council’s communication and attitude towards residents, along with how it manages hazards.
In 92 per cent of the Housing Ombudsman’s findings, the council was found to have handled an issue poorly.
Scott submitted a Stage 1 complaint over the leak, which was upheld by the council. He said: “The council said it was due to management changes and a poor handover, but I am not particularly convinced by this because I had called them weekly since March.
“The council said in the response to the complaint that it had been missed in handover notes, but there’s no way you can miss something that someone keeps on calling [about] every single week.”
A Lewisham Council spokesperson said they were sorry for the delays experienced by Scott and for the “distress and inconvenience” it caused to him and his family.
They added: “Everyone deserves a safe, secure and well-maintained home. We recognise that in this case our service fell below the standards residents should expect.
“While repair orders were raised and investigations were carried out, the necessary works were not progressed quickly enough. We have upheld the complaint, apologised to the resident and offered a goodwill payment in recognition of the impact this had.”
They went on to say: “We remain committed to improving services, learning from complaints and making sure residents receive the timely repairs and support they need.”
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