Adur Council acts after tenants wait years for repairs

As a wheelchair user, Mel says repair work can often stop her accessing most of the downstairs of her home in Southwick

Adur District Council said it will listen to its tenants, as a multi-million pound upgrade to its council homes has begun.

In February, the council referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing, who found serious risks to tenants, requiring urgent action.

Some residents told the BBC they have waited years for repairs.

The council said it will change its culture and prioritise safety, after thousands of vital checks were missed.

Mel Humphreys first complained about damp in her Southwick home in June 2022. By the time work began in February she said mushrooms were growing in her kitchen. The work is still ongoing.

She said: "I love my home, but at the moment I'm embarrassed to invite people round. It's degrading."

While work continues, Mel must keep some of her furniture in the garden shed

Another tenant, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, said she first complained of damp in 2019.

She lived with it through lockdown, until it was addressed earlier this year.

She said: "It's just the look of it. Where I can't decorate, the mould was all fluffy and pink."

She is still chasing repairs to her shower and other areas of her flat. "I haven't got the energy," she said.

Repairs to the Southwick Estate alone will cost £3.5m - with more needed throughout Adur

Last November, following the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in a damp and mouldy flat in Rochdale, the Government ordered councils to check their housing.

Adur District Council discovered safety issues and referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) in February.

When the RSH reported back in May, it found 1,500 council homes in Adur did not have smoke alarms, 1,500 had not had an electrical check in the last 10 years, and one in five homes had an overdue fire risk assessment.

The council's director for housing and communities, Tina Favier, said she recognised they had a "big task" ahead

The council's director for housing and communities, Tina Favier, accepted its performance was "not acceptable" and vowed to improve.

"Our residents deserve to live in safe, secure and good homes, and I want to be part of making that happen", she told BBC Radio Sussex.

Adur District Council has started £3.5m of urgent repairs to the Southwick estate and is prioritising safety checks across the district.

Opposition Labour councillor Jeremy Gardner told the BBC: "Often the tenants have been blamed for problems when we can now see there has been a failure by this council to do the basic maintenance."

Asked why it had taken the council so long to spot the problems, Conservative cabinet member Kevin Boram told the BBC: "This has been a deep-rooted issue with housing in the UK for 20 years."

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