A South London council must fork out £100 after a woman was forced to wait more than two months for her windows to be fixed. The housing watchdog found delays and failures in Kingston Council's handling of the unnamed woman's complaint.

The woman claimed "incompetence" from the council had caused her a "great deal of stress and inconvenience". She also complained about the council's decision in December 2020 to keep a single point of contact to restrict communication with her.

The resident told the council on March 6, 2021 that there was water inside the double glazing in two window panes above the balcony and the seals and outer edge of the balcony window were broken. The authority's contractor later apologised for cancelling an appointment to repair the window on April 21 "at very late notice" due to a communication error. It couldn't attend an appointment on April 29 that the resident requested, and rescheduled for May.

The Housing Ombudsman report found the delayed window repair was "frustrating" for the resident but said the old windows still functioned correctly. It took around 49 working days, between March 6 and May 18, for the windows to be replaced after the initial complaint.

The report says: "In this case, no evidence was seen to show the old windows stopped performing their required function before the replacements were installed. Nor was any information seen to show that the resident was adversely impacted by the water between the window panes in the interim period."

But it adds: "It is reasonable to conclude the resident was inconvenienced by the late cancellation of the initial appointment on 21 April 2021. The timeline suggests the [single point of contact] could have notified the resident about the cancellation prior to her allocated timeslot. 

"If they had, her overall level of inconvenience may have been reduced. It is also reasonable to conclude the resident had to make additional arrangements to facilitate a further (preventable) appointment on 5 May 2021.

"On that basis, the landlord's apology was not sufficient to redress the resident given what went wrong. Generally speaking, an apology is often inadequate redress given multiple issues. In this case, the evidence confirms the landlord's failures included delay, a rescheduled appointment and incorrect information in the landlord's stage one response. As a result, there was service failure in respect of the landlord's response to the resident's report of window repairs, along with its subsequent complaint handling."

The council has been ordered to pay £100 for the distress and inconvenience experienced by the woman due to the delays and failures.

A Kingston Council spokesperson said: "Kingston Council is committed to the highest standards of customer service. We take any complaints very seriously and ensure we use them to improve services to council housing residents. We are also committed to listening to and learning from feedback following a determination from the Housing Ombudsman. The council puts in place a formal response to the Ombudsman determination and this action plan is monitored to ensure services improve.

"This year we have increased overall customer satisfaction on repairs to 88%, up from 84% last year March of 2021. We are unable to comment on individual issues and will continue to work with our customer to resolve any outstanding repairs to their property."