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London Borough of Camden Council (202329408)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202329408

Camden Council

23 June 2025


Our approach

The Housing Ombudsman’s approach to investigating and determining complaints is to decide what is fair in all the circumstances of the case. This is set out in the Housing Act 1996 and the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme). The Ombudsman considers the evidence and looks to see if there has been any ‘maladministration’, for example whether the landlord has failed to keep to the law, followed proper procedure, followed good practice or behaved in a reasonable and competent manner.

Both the resident and the landlord have submitted information to the Ombudsman and this has been carefully considered. Their accounts of what has happened are summarised below. This report is not an exhaustive description of all the events that have occurred in relation to this case, but an outline of the key issues as a background to the investigation’s findings.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports about issues with her heating system.

Background

  1. The resident has been a secure tenant of the landlord for over 10 years. She lives at the property with her family.
  2. The property is heated through a district heating system, where heat is generated in a central location and distributed to multiple properties through a network of pipes. Each property has a heat interface unit (HIU), which transfers heat from the central system to the property’s heating and hot water systems.
  3. On 13 October 2023 the resident raised a formal complaint about the heating at the property. (She said she had made a previous complaint a year earlier using a different email address). She said there had been issues with the heating system from 2014, the source of which had only been discovered and remedied on 9 October 2023. She sought a 50% refund from her heating and hot water bills for that period and other compensation.
  4. The landlord responded at stage 1 of its complaints process on 23 October 2023. It “partially upheld” the resident’s complaint, accepting that the heating had been “non-functional” between December 2022 and May 2023, when it said it resolved an issue with the “air flow” to the property. It said it had already offered to credit her rent account with the sum of £425 for that period recognising it had overcharged her. It said this was based on individual usage. It told her that if she had had a complete loss of service, she could claim a heat rebate.
  5. The resident asked to escalate her complaint on 27 October 2023. She said the landlord failed to acknowledge that the heating issues went back to 2014. She believed contractors (in 2016) closed a valve that cut off heating to the property. She said she had been without heating until October 2023. She said she had reported issues to the landlord from September/October 2022. She said the landlord had failed to check her communications from her previous email address and had shown no empathy for the distress the lack of heating had caused.
  6. The resident also said the refund the landlord offered had been given to the whole estate because it had been overcharging all its residents for heating and hot water. She said that, instead, she sought a refund of 50% of her annual charge as her heating had not been working. She also sought compensation for having to use oil-filled radiators.
  7. The landlord sent its stage 2 response on 27 November 2023. It said it had been unable to find a previously registered complaint from the resident. It said it could not consider events between 2014 and her current complaint. It considered the redress offered in its stage 1 response was appropriate.
  8. The resident asked the Ombudsman to investigate, maintaining that she was entitled to 50% compensation for the reduction in services from 2014 to 2023.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. There are no records that the resident complained about the heating until her complaint in October 2023. In that complaint she said she had not complained at an earlier stage because the landlord said the heating was working and she did not want to be perceived as a “problem” tenant.
  2. In any case, the Service will normally only investigate complaints raised with the landlord within 12 months of the events being complained about. Complaints should be raised promptly so that landlords can take action to resolve the issues, and as time passes records become unavailable and memories fade. This investigation is therefore focused on the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of heating issues from 2022, up to her complaint and the landlord’s responses to it.

On the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports about issues with the property heating system.

  1. The resident said she was completely “without heating” at the property until October 2023. She said she had to use oil-filled radiators to heat her home.
  2. At stage 1 of its complaint’s process, the landlord accepted that the heating system had been “non-functional” between December 2022 and May 2023.
  3. Because of that it was appropriate that the landlord offered compensation. At stage 1 it offered compensation of £425 for the period between 7 December 2022 and May 2023. However, when the resident asked to escalate her complaint, she said this money was a refund of overcharges, which the landlord had paid back to all residents. It was not a refund for, in her view, the specific problems with a lack of heating that she specifically had experienced.
  4. In the landlord’s stage 2 response it said that “the redress was offered for the losses of heating, at [her] home and upon the wider estate”. This was a failure to clearly respond to the resident’s claim that the same payment was made to the whole estate and therefore was not a refund to address the particular type of heating loss it accepted she had experienced. 
  5. The landlord’s housing repairs policy says that where there has been a “failure of landlord-controlled heating” or hot water for 3 consecutive days or more between September and 1 June it will reimburse customers. It says it refunds a proportion of the gross weekly charge made to the resident. As the landlord did not explain how it had calculated the £425 it offered, it has not clearly demonstrated that it has, as it should have, made this payment to the resident in line with its policy.
  6. The landlord’s housing repairs policy also says that in addition to the refund it will pay compensation when there has been a loss of heating or hot water that is for longer than 5 days. Given that the landlord accepted that the heating at the property had been “non-functional” for over 100 working days, it would have been appropriate to have offered compensation for the distress and inconvenience the resident said she experienced during the period it accepted its heating system had not worked. It is not apparent that it did so.
  7. The landlord’s policy says it only provides compensation where it has not provided alternatives. There is no evidence that it did. The resident said she had to provide alternatives herself by using oil filled radiators. As the period this investigation is concerned with was during the winter months, it would have been especially appropriate for the landlord to have provided alternative heating. We have taken this into account when making our orders.
  8. In summary, the landlord failed to clearly address the resident’s concerns about the compensation offered, failed to offer alternative heating during the winter period it was aware the heating was non-functional and failed to consider offering compensation to the resident when she explained she had to provide a heating alternative herself. These were unremedied service failures by the landlord.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of reports of issues with heating at the property.

Order

  1. Within 4 weeks of this report the landlord must provide evidence it has:
    1. Calculated and paid the resident an appropriate refund for the period between December 2022 and May 2023, when the landlord accepts the resident’s heating was non-functional.  (For the avoidance of doubt the landlord must show that this refund has been calculated with particular reference to the issues experienced at the property and is separate to the sum it paid to all residents to recognise an overcharge for the period).
    2. Paid the resident £350 to acknowledge the failings identified in this report, including those at paragraph 18 and 19.