Examples from the watchdog’s report include a mother unable to close some of her windows properly for four years, a window coming loose from its frame in a baby’s room, and residents using duct tape to hold windows together.<\/p>\n
Duct tape is also how one council tenant in west London told us he had tried to make his windows safer, because he was so worried about his nine-year-old daughter. The tenant, who lives on the Lancaster Court Estate in Fulham, also says at one point, broken handles, which the council said were unfixable, meant a window was stuck open for a week during the winter.<\/p>\n
In total, we spoke to a dozen residents on the estate, which is owned by Hammersmith and Fulham Council, and saw that visibly broken windows without handles were a widespread problem, as well as mould around window frames.<\/p>\n
The windows are a “death trap” says Tracey McGurk, who has lived in her flat for five years and is worried for her grandchildren’s safety.<\/p>\n
The day after we contacted the council, it sent a team to survey the windows and found six urgent repairs were required.<\/p>\n
“We’re investing more than \u00a31m every week to refurbish and repair our ageing housing stock,” a spokesperson for Hammersmith and Fulham Council said, “part of a bold, three-year strategy that includes replacing every window that has reached the end of its life.”<\/p>\n
The council is “not just meeting the housing ombudsman’s window safety standards, we’re exceeding them,” they added.<\/p>\n
According to the ombudsman’s report, some landlords are delaying temporary repairs for years because it is “most cost-effective” to wait for major works. <\/p>\n
“Replacing windows can be complex and costly,” says Richard Blakeway, “but there can be no justification for the conditions some residents have endured.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Examples from the watchdog’s report include a mother unable to close some of her windows properly for four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-340428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115019962444331265","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}