Council problem update

[Rich44]

Thought I would start a new thread seeing as the old one was quite long and very old.

Further to our council nightmare with ASB problems, horrendous repair problems etc we now have a report from the LGO finding in our favour on nearly every item on the list and ordering the council to do the repairs apologise in writing and pay us £800 compensation.

I will type the full report up later on for people to read but its difficult at the moment which i'll explain further down.

The council started to do the works required it took 4 attempts to replace the hot water tank as what the surveyor has specified the fitters were not happy to do as it was a bodge and would take 2 weeks to install (pipes all the way round the flat at skirting board level on every wall) they wanted to fit a combi boiler in the kitchen which would mean the pipes could go round the ceiling instead.

After 4 visits and a huge amount of arguing with the council they eventually agreed to do this only due to the fact that one of the fitters used to work for the council officer in question and called him on our behalf and had a right go at him.

During all this time someone actually asked to exchange with us unfortunately they live in the middle of nowhere, we felt that despite the fact that Cheryl doesnt drive we had to take this exchange as it was the only person in 4 years to even offer even though it would be horrendously inconvenient being this far away from the city centre (30 miles).

Thursday 4th Jan we moved house to our new home and its lovely its on top of a hill so the views across the valley are beautiful, the neighbours are fantastic and even put a welcome card through our door which we nearly cried about as it's such a change from where we were.

The move cost:

£330 moving company
2 days holiday from work

It's now going to cost us a load of money to get carpets etc fitted as the ones that are down are filthy and worn out and William will be crawling soon.

Where am I going with this? well the LGO initially said the council should pay us £800, they're now arguing saying they will only pay £600 as they don't feel that the aggravation and stress that their action and inaction has caused is worth £800.

Allow me to recap on what they did/didnt do:

Took 9 months to repair a leak from upstairs which destroyed our bathroom ceiling
Failed to instigate their own break in procedures to repair the above leak when refused entry by the tenant above even though it was obvious the problem was coming from her flat.
Offered mediation to sort out ASB problems which we agreed to and never materialised.
Part of the stress caused by the ASB and council caused cheryl to be hospitalised 3 times during the last month of her pregnancy due to high blood pressure partly caused by stress.
Took 4 visits to install new heating system and hot water on each of those visits they ordered the wrong number of radiators and on the last one tried to tell us we did not need a radiator in the bathroom and we again had to argue this.

There are many other things as well to involved to list but once I get the report up you will see what I mean.

Anyway we feel that we were forced into this move by the council as we didnt really want to move in the first place we just wanted somewhere nice to live that wasnt damp, mouldy with neighbours carrying on like they owned the area. We feel that the council should bear more of the costs of our move (in fact all of them to be honest) plus the cost for carpets etc as again had we not been forced to move we wouldnt now have to spend out on this stuff.

what i'm really after is peoples opinions on if I took this to county court and used the LGO report and other council documents (with terrible spelling and grammatical mistakes in them i'll add) whether we would win and whether we would be likely to win either the £800 plus costs or whether we could win substantially more?

My gut instinct would be to go for either 50% (or more) of the rent for the affected 10 months or to get quotes for carpets etc and submit these to support our claim but I would really appreciate some advice on this first obviously

[Rich44]

Oh forgot to add reason its hard to get things done at the moment is that we are stuck on dial up as the previous tenant has not cancelled their ADSL and as a result we have to wait 10 days for BTw to clear the marker from the line before ordering

[Rich44]

anyone?