Sovereign Network Homes (202310504)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202310504

Sovereign Network Homes (Former Network Homes)

31 October 2024

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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s:
1. Concerns about the frequency of the cleaning contract.
2. Associated formal complaint.

Background

The resident is the leaseholder of a maisonette, in a block which is owned by the landlord.
The resident had previously been in dispute with the landlord over some of the service charges dating back to 2020. The investigations found errors relating to double charging for the cleaning and 3 months of cleaning that the landlord could not prove had been completed. During the investigation, both the cleaning contractor and the landlord had confirmed that communal cleaning to the block was carried out monthly. A year later, on 11 March 2022, the landlord advised the resident that following discussions with the cleaning company, it had confirmed that the frequency of communal cleaning had, in fact, always been weekly. The resident challenged the landlord on this.
On 25 March 2023, the resident made a formal complaint to the landlord. He said that,2 weeks earlier, he had been told the estates team would contact him to discuss his concerns with the cleaning and they had not. He felt he was being ignored. The landlord had previously overcharged him for cleaning by £650, which had taken 2 years to resolve. Cleaning frequency, resulting in him being further overcharged, had been going on for 14 months. As a result, he wanted the full amount of £335.34 refunded by the landlord.
The landlord responded to the complaint on 12 April 2023. It apologised for the lack of response from the estates and leasehold team, explaining that this was an oversight. It said it had already investigated and accounted for all cleaning charges for the disputed period. It had also confirmed the frequency and service delivery of the cleaning contract. However, because of his continued dissatisfaction, it had arranged for its estate team to contact him by 14 April 2023 to discuss his concerns.
The resident escalated his complaint. He felt it was not right for an officer who had been involved in his case to investigate the complaint. He wanted a further refund for the weekly charge of the cleaning service that he had only received monthly. He said the landlord failed to understand and monitor the contract.
The landlord sent out its complaint response on 18 May 2023. It said that its investigating officer was appropriate and impartial. It had fully explained to him the reason the cleaning sheets were not signed every time. The estate team had confirmed that cleaning occurs weekly, but it accepted they had not shared this information with the resident. As a resolution, it awarded the resident £42 compensation for time and trouble.
The resident approached this Service because he was of the view that the landlord had not been factual about the frequency of the cleaning, so it did not have to refund his charges. He said he had proven it had lied before by securing a refund for the landlord’s double charging and 3 missed monthly cleans.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

Part of the resident’s complaint related to the amount the landlord had charged him for services. The Ombudsman will not normally assess complaints that relate to the level, reasonableness, or liability to pay rent or service charges. This is in accordance with paragraph 42.d. of the housing Ombudsman’s Scheme which states that the Ombudsman cannot consider complaints which “concern the level of rent or service charge or the amount of the rent or service charge increase.”
We are unable to assess whether the resident is liable to pay an amount but will assess the landlord’s communication about the charges and response to the resident’s queries.
In this respect, the Ombudsman will consider whether a landlord has acted fairly, given all the circumstances of a case, whether it has identified and put right service failures and, where appropriate, whether it has learnt from the outcomes of the individual complaint to improve its overall service delivery.
If the resident wishes to pursue a complaint about the amount the landlord has charged him for services, he may seek advice from the Leaseholder Advisory Service.

The cleaning contract

The resident had to pay the landlord a charge for the communal cleaning of the block he lives in.
On request for information about the cleaning service and associated charges, the landlord told this Service that this was set out in the resident’s lease agreement. The landlord’s service charge policy, which states “the services provided will be clearly identified to customers and set out in agreements (which include leases and any other relevant documentation)” also supported this.
On checking the lease agreement, we found examples of services and details of how costs for services incurred by the landlord would be apportioned (in 8 equal parts). But there was no other information related to the cleaning service or the provision of it.
The landlord told this Service, that it provided a cleaning service, it delivered this weekly. It charges for the service monthly, but this is actually for 4 weekly cleans. However, there was no evidence that the landlord had officially informed the resident of this through its lease agreement, which did not align with its service charging policy.
During the landlord’s investigation into overcharges in 2020, it sought clarity from the cleaning contractor on the frequency of the cleaning contract. The contractor confirmed in an email dated 20 May 2020 that the communal cleaning to the block was monthly. The landlord later refunded the cost of 3 monthly cleans that had not been completed. The resident saw this as evidence that the cleaning and associated charges were monthly and not weekly.
In April 2021, the resident requested clarification from the landlord on the terms of the cleaning contract. He was of the view that the landlord’s service charge for cleaning per month was excessive for a cleaner that attended once a month for 1 hour to sweep the stairs and occasionally mop.
The landlord’s estate team responded on 16 April 2021. It said specifically that the cleaning frequency was 4 weekly and attendance was usually on a Thursday. It said the next scheduled clean was for 26 April 2021, which exceeded the weekly timetable. The officer could also name the 6 key tasks that should be completed each time, as well as an annual deep clean being included in the contract. The estates team’s level of knowledge and understanding of the contract at this time was good and appropriate for the team that monitored it.
A year later, in March 2022, the landlord wrote to the resident apologising for giving him the wrong information, and stating that it had confirmed that the frequency of communal cleaning had in fact always been weekly. This was not reasonable; the landlord should have explained why misinformation had been given and how it had satisfied itself that this information was now correct.
This was understandably confusing for the resident. Until this point, the landlord had told him the cleans should be monthly, which was the frequency of cleaning that he said he had witnessed. He also had a copy of an onsite attendance log, which illustrated the cleaners’ signatures at 4 weekly intervals. All of which contradicted the information he was now being given.
The resident was then of the view that he had paid for weekly cleans, but only received the service monthly. The landlord had previously overcharged the resident for cleaning services (2020/2021), which the resident had argued for some time in order to get a refund. This had already undermined the resident’s trust in the landlord and prompted him not to just accept the landlord’s word on the matter.
It would have been reasonable to expect the landlord to investigate a matter affecting contract delivery and expenditure, robustly. It is appropriate that landlords monitor and keep records of any service provision. This is to ensure that it can verify that the service is being provided and to the standard expected and if challenged, can show that those services were provided as they should be.
The evidence that the landlord relied on to support this change of information was correspondence from the cleaning contractor. The contractor told the landlord that the contract was for weekly cleans, even though it had previously said monthly.
The landlord asked about the monthly signatures on the log sheet. In response, the contractor said that several operatives shared the cleaning at this site on an alternating rota. It advised that “unfortunately” its staff had not signed the log sheet at every visit. It also said, as there had been several queries about the service at this site, it proposed 1 cleaner only in the future for the site. The landlord accepted this explanation.
The landlord had also relied on an email from the estate officer, on 13 April 2023, that said the contractor completed communal cleans weekly as further evidence that this was the frequency.
The estate officer’s confirmation in 2023 that cleaning at the site was being carried out weekly was likely to have been correct. It was not in question that the contractor was cleaning weekly following investigations into the overcharging from 2022. However, it did not support this with proof other than the offer of a statement from the contractor and did not evidence that the resident had received weekly cleaning in the period he had questioned, which was between 2019 and 2022.
The information provided by the landlord’s estate officer, who was in post in 2020, said that cleans were monthly. The level of detail she provided on days, dates and the spec showed a detailed knowledge of the contract, which was clearly evidence–based and therefore more reliable.
This Service requested further information from the landlord; cleaning attendance logs for the period (2019-2022), and/or any other evidence it had relied on to prove a weekly service was provided.
The landlord approached the contractor and the estates team for the information requested. However, they could not provide any, as they said the “achieves” for this period had been disposed of. We presume that this was referring to the information having been ‘archived.’ This was not unreasonable, as a further 2 years had now elapsed since the resident raised this issue.
However, the Ombudsman would not have expected the landlord to be requesting this information now, but rather to have requested it at the time the resident was challenging the frequency of cleaning in 2022. We asked for the information that it had relied on to conclude the contractor had provided a weekly service.
Internal communication referred to several records produced that could be used to this effect, including job cards, sign-in sheets, van trackers, bulk team visits, inspections and photographs of log sheets. It did not provide any of this information for the period in question (2019-2022) or to support its complaint investigation into the matter.
The lack of information and clarity about the provision of cleaning and the related charges had been a contributing factor in this complaint. Information relating to a contracted service should be easily accessible to the staff involved in monitoring the contract and who collate and collect charges for it. Staff in this case relied too heavily on information from the contractor, and not the terms of the contract or its own contract monitoring evidence, which was not appropriate.
Overall, the landlord’s records provided stronger evidence that the contractor carried out cleaning monthly during 2020-21 than it did weekly. Despite the landlord insisting the wrong information was given and the cleaning had always been weekly, it has not provided sufficient evidence to prove the contractor delivered a weekly cleaning service during the time the resident has complained about. The lack of evidence of a weekly cleaning service was a failing. One which was not picked up or addressed through the landlord’s complaint handling process, so redress was not offered.

Complaint handling

Part of the reason for the resident escalating his complaint was because he did not think the landlord should have allocated his complaint to the member of staff it chose to investigate (stage 1). This was because she had previously been involved in his case.
The landlord’s complaints policy states that a member of staff would conduct the complaint investigation who had a suitable level of training and competence.
The investigating officer was a team leader in the service area concerned and met the competency requirements of the policy to investigate stage 1 complaints. However, the policy also stated that it would “never ask a member of staff to investigate a complaint where they have been personally involved in the concerns raised”.
The investigating officer had been involved in dealing with the resident’s enquiries prior to his complaint. Under the landlord’s complaint policy, it was not appropriate for her to investigate the complaint.
The landlord did not uphold the resident’s complaint on this issue, in part because he had not mentioned that he had dealt with this particular officer. The reasoning behind this was not reasonable. The officer investigating the complaint would have known that she had been involved in the resident’s case. As a result, she should have known that the complaints policy prevented her from investigating it.
It is not good practise for a member of staff that is the subject of a complaint to investigate it. However, the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code does not require that staff who have been involved in the concerns raised are not party to the investigation. Usually, those that have been involved in the concerns raised are the most knowledgeable and qualified to respond to the complaint. The landlord might want to consider revising this aspect of the policy. With small teams, this restriction might present a resourcing issue when responding to complaints.
Nevertheless, while this in itself did not cause any detriment to the resident, it was a requirement of the landlord’s complaint handling policy that staff involved in the concerns raised, do not investigate. It was therefore not appropriate that it did not adhere to this.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman’s Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns about the frequency of the cleaning contract.
In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman’s Scheme, there was service failure in the landlord’s handling of the associated complaint.

Orders

The Ombudsman orders that within 4 weeks of the date of this report the landlord provides evidence to this Service of compliance with the following orders:
1. Apologises to the resident in writing, for the failings identified in this report including its handling of the formal complaint.
2. Pays the resident the sum of £400 compensation, broken down as follows:
  1. £300 for the loss of amenity (weekly cleaning service).
  2. £100 for the resident’s time and inconvenience to get this issue resolved.

Recommendations

Post complaint records indicate that monitoring and knowledge about the cleaning contract at this site has improved since 2022. The are however concerns about the landlord’s ability still to evidence this. The Ombudsman therefore recommends that the landlord reviews its contract monitoring practices to ensure they are robust and are supported by adequate records to evidence its findings.