Ombudsman Calls for Apology from Council Over Resident’s Treatment
A resident in Brighton seeks justice after years of council neglect and discrimination
Brighton, UK, Ombudsman, Council, Anti-Social Behaviour, Discrimination
Lee Catt feels like he’s been treated unfairly by Brighton and Hove City Council. He spoke up about drug dealers and the issues in the Craven Vale housing estate, but it seems his complaints only made things worse.
After going through the council’s complaint process twice without any real help, the housing ombudsman stepped in and found that the council messed up. They called it “maladministration,” which is a big deal.
This ruling covers a lot of ground, including how the council dealt with anti-social behavior, discrimination claims, and even cleaning issues in shared spaces.
On December 17, the ombudsman said a senior manager should apologize to Mr. Catt and that the council needs to pay him £550 for the trouble he’s faced.
They also have to come up with a new policy to help vulnerable residents like him.
The ombudsman, Katherine Brown, was pretty critical of the council for not providing proper responses to complaints. She pointed out that they didn’t act quickly enough when a neighbor was leaving messes in shared areas.
It took them weeks to clean up, which is just unacceptable. The council had already offered Mr. Catt £500 for the cleaning issues, but Ms. Brown felt that wasn’t enough given all the other problems.
She said the council needed to apologize and compensate him for their failures. Mr. Catt even had to file a “subject access request” to see what the council was saying about him internally, which is wild.
He noticed that after he complained, the council seemed to treat him differently, like they were trying to push back against him instead of helping.
Both he and a neighbor are now having their cases looked at to see if discrimination played a role in how they were treated.
They’ve had issues with data breaches too, with the council mixing up their information. It’s been a mess.
There’s even a recording of a council official saying they’d rather protect themselves from complaints than actually deal with the issues. That’s just not right.
Mr. Catt has been in touch with council leaders about his ongoing issues, asking why they keep lying when he’s provided all the evidence.
He believes if the council had just admitted their mistakes and apologized from the start, things wouldn’t have escalated like this.
He’s also been talking to others in Brighton and Hove who are facing similar issues, saying it seems like the council has a pattern of ignoring complaints.
Mr. Catt is waiting for the final ruling from the ombudsman, and the council has said they’re still working on their response.
They’ve promised to comply with any orders once the final decision is made, but it’s clear there’s a lot of work to be done to fix these issues.