A north London council has paid out nearly £2,000 to a man with arthritis after contractors left his heating cut off for nearly eight months.
A north London council has paid out nearly £2,000 to a man with arthritis after contractors left his heating cut off for nearly eight months.
The Housing Ombudsman ordered Camden Council to apologise to the resident, who has not been named, and reimburse £775 in payments he made towards heating alone after contractors responded to reports of a leaking radiator by ripping it out and blocking the heat supply to the entire property.
The man flagged the problems to the council five times between February and June 2025, but only once did the council fulfil its own policy of sending emergency repairs staff to attend the property by 8pm the same day.
Two follow-up repair appointments were booked for May but were cancelled with no notice. It was not until the resident made a formal complaint in September 2025 that the council acknowledged the repairs were incomplete. Until that point he had resorted to running costly electric heaters, though these failed to warm his home properly.
The heating was restored in October that year, but the watchdog’s investigation found “maladministration” on the council’s part – finding “no evidence” it had considered its tenant’s access to alternative heating throughout this time.
Although the council offered several payments throughout the saga, the Ombudsman repeatedly found these insufficient, either because they fell short of what he was entitled to under the council’s own stated policy, or did not reflect the “seriousness and duration” of its failures.
Camden’s repairs policy explicitly categorises leaking radiators and heating failures as emergency repairs which require on-site visits by 8pm the same day.
The watchdog also rebuked the council for service failure in how it treated the resident’s complaints during the “prolonged” period of disrepair.
This included failing to provide a complete response to the resident – breaking its complaints policy – more than once. The council also did not record the repairs it had carried out, or the amount it had compensated the resident, causing him “frustration and inconvenience”.
In the end, the Ombudsman ordered the council to pay the resident £1,852.65, encompassing the loss of heating and his own spend on energy payments, the time and trouble it caused him, the missed appointments and the council’s failures in handling his complaint.
The council had originally offered £100 for the man’s time and trouble, but the Ombudsman ordered that it pay £500 to reflect the gravity of the problem.
The watchdog also ordered the council to issue a “ specific, meaningful and empathetic” apology to the resident. Although the evidence showed Camden did not know he had arthritis, the Ombudsman suggested the council update its record of this fact for future consideration.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), a Camden Council spokesperson said: “We take our repairs responsibilities very seriously and we would like to apologise to the resident for the delays in fixing the issues in their home.
“The repairs are now complete and we have paid the compensation amount, so the Ombudsman has confirmed the case is closed. Since then, we have appointed a new communal heating contractor and have made improvements to our processes for managing repair works.”
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