WESTMINSTER City Council is to pay back £16,000 in rent to a tenant who launched a legal challenge against the authority.

The tenant, who is a wheelchair user, is also being paid £5,000 as part of a bumper package of compensation for failures dating back to May 2020, a council report showed.

A review found unacceptable delays from the city council in addressing a complaint by the tenant – who had been asking for adaptations to be made so that they could be safely discharged from hospital – and that it had not considered their vulnerability.

It also found the council’s response contained “inaccuracies” about ad-hoc visits being arranged and a failure of repairers to log issues and pass them on.

The report said: “This review has found significant service failures in both dealing with the repairs and responding to the complaint, as well as missed opportunities to discuss a move to more suitable housing with the tenant.”

The tenant has since been moved into care while their joint tenant is receiving help finding permanent housing.

In July 2022 the council was contacted by the tenant’s Member of Parliament who complained about many years of disrepair at the property and how it was affecting the elderly and ill tenants.

But the complaint was dismissed by the city council, which said it had not received a request for repairs in 12 months.

It also said officers had made attempts to visit the flat but were unsuccessful because the tenants, who have not been identified, needed their daughter there to help them.

The resident escalated the complaint in September 2022 but it took the council six months to log it and another six weeks to respond, the report revealed. There was a further seven-month delay dealing with the resident’s refusal of a compensation offer and a further four-week delay in addressing their request for a review.

An interview review of the case was only triggered after the resident wrote in requesting £110,000 in compensation for the distress the delays had caused.

A report to the city council’s general purposes committee asked for permission to pay the tenant £21,407 in compensation in total.

It has also vowed to carry out more frequent housing support reviews for residents and acknowledged a lack of oversight from directors.

And it is seeking to make it easier for severely ill tenants to escalate complaints.

According to the council, compensation payments over £2,000 need to go before its general purposes committee to meet its own financial regulations.

The council said earlier this week it would not comment on the case until a decision had been made by the committee.