A Southwark residents group have been left “wanting answers” after it was revealed Southwark Council held pages of screenshots of conversations about Ledbury Estate from the group’s private Facebook page.

A spokesperson for the Ledbury Action Group said although a member of the Facebook group had been sharing the information with the council over several months, council staff should have asked the sender to stop.

The Ledbury Action Group set up the private Facebook group in the summer of last year to provide a forum for residents to share information, legal advice, and other concerns regarding Ledbury Estate, spokesperson Danielle Gregory said.

The estate has mostly been emptied since the buildings were found to be at risk of collapse last year.

But a member of the group took screenshots of what residents believed were private posts and sent them to council staff, where it was often forwarded on to councillors.

Ms Gregory, who discovered the 24-pages of screenshots held by the council through a Freedom of Information request, said this was “totally unacceptable” as the council have a dedicated team at the estate, with the residents group active in sharing concerns with the council.

“The screenshots included really personal information,” she said.

“This has been going on for months and months. As a responsible landlord and local authority, they should have asked them to stop.

“I would like to know why they didn’t quell this sooner? I would like to have answers and the residents would like to have answers.

“They didn’t have qualms about sharing private stuff and no one in Southwark Council flagged it with us,” she said.

This comes after a subject access request revealed the council held messages about Ms Gregory from the Facebook group last month.

Commenting at the time, cabinet member for housing management and modernisation,  Cllr Stephanie Cryan said the messages were not confidential.

But Ms Gregory’s FOI showed there were “hundreds” of private conversations shared with the council, she said.

A council spokesperson reiterated that the messages revealed through the FOI “were not confidential.”

“As we have stated before, the emails were not confidential and were sent to the council to demonstrate concerns, which the council was asked, correctly, to respond to. The team based on the Ledbury estate have a good relationship with the residents and former residents in the Towers, and the rest of the estate, and have only had one estate resident raise their concerns about the Facebook incident to them. If anyone of the estate has any complaints or concerns about anything to do with the Ledbury the team is happy for them to pop into the TRA Hall and speak to them directly.

“We are addressing the action group’s concerns through their solicitors,” the spokesperson added.