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Lewisham Council (202118177)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202118177

Lewisham Council

29 February 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

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of antisocial behaviour (ASB) from a neighbour.

Background

  1. The resident occupies the property, a flat, under a secure tenancy agreement with the landlord.
  2. The resident has, for some years, been reporting a neighbour for deliberate ASB including spraying urine and faeces onto her window and balcony and making loud noises designed to disturb her.
  3. On 16 September 2021, the resident contacted the landlord and said her neighbours had placed faeces on her bedroom windowsill. She said they were also deliberately making noises to disturb her. The landlord said that it would investigate. On 25 October 2021, it wrote to her and said it was closing the investigation because there was no evidence to support her claims. It told her how to download its noise app to help gather evidence in future.
  4. The resident made a formal complaint to the landlord, through this Service, stating that it had failed to investigate her concerns appropriately. The landlord provided a stage 1 response to her in February 2022, stating that its ASB team had investigated her reports and found no evidence to support them. It said it would re-open its investigation if it received substantial evidence to support her claims. It again recommended that she should use the noise app.
  5. The resident escalated the matter, repeating that the landlord had done nothing to address her reports of ASB. The landlord sent her a stage 2 response on 7 February 2023, stating that, since the stage 1 response, she had sent some emails saying that her neighbour had been spraying sewage on her balcony and deliberately making noise. It said it could not investigate these because she had provided no evidence, but it should have explained this.
  6. The resident asked this Service to investigate her complaint about the landlord.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident’s reports to the landlord include references to allegations of ASB against her neighbour since 2015, these have also been discussed in the complaint responses. Paragraph 42(c) of the Scheme says the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which were not brought to the attention of the member landlord as a formal complaint within a reasonable period (which would normally be within 6 months of the matters arising). This investigation focuses on events from September 2021, around 6 months before the resident raised her complaint, to February 2022 when the complaint exhausted the landlord’s complaints procedure. Any mention of the historical incidents in this report would be for contextual purposes only as they have not been assessed.

ASB

  1. The landlord’s ASB policy makes a distinction between ASB and noise caused by day-to-day living. It has 2 categories of ASB, A and B, A being more serious than B. It says it will investigate allegations of A-type ASB within 24 hours and B-type within 3 working days. It says it will take all reports seriously.
  2. The policy says that the landlord will not reopen an ASB investigation if, after review, no new evidence relevant to the complaint has been provided. It says it will always provide the reasons for this decision.
  3. The resident first made allegations of a similar kind about her neighbour in 2015 and she has been doing so regularly ever since. The evidence shows that the landlord has, over the years, interviewed the neighbour and the resident about their situation on several occasions and had found no evidence that the neighbour is responsible for ASB.
  4. The documents provided to this Service further show that the landlord and its partner agencies have frequently suggested that the resident should use the landlord’s noise app to gather evidence to support her reports of ASB. It also suggested contacting its “professional witness” service which attends properties at weekends when there are reports of consistent ASB. There is no evidence that the resident used either service over the period covered by this investigation.
  5. When the resident made her report of ASB in September 2021, the landlord attended the property, as is required by its policy. It inspected her balcony and did not agree with her opinion that there were faeces there as it found none present. It closed its investigation in October 2021 and said it would re-open it only if she provided any evidence to support her claims. It again suggested that she should download the noise app and explained to her this could be done. It repeated these messages in the stage 1 response of February 2022.
  6. While the resident made numerous allegations against the neighbour over the next year before the stage 2 complaint response, this Service has seen no indication that she provided evidence to the landlord supporting those allegations. Therefore, the landlord’s decision not to re-open the complaint was in line with its policy and with the information that it had given to the resident.
  7. This is particularly so as the neighbour had made counter-allegations of ASB against the resident. In July 2020, both parties had gone through a mediation process and the resident had agreed not to bang on the neighbour’s walls. The neighbour provided evidence that he had not been present on many occasions when the resident claimed to have heard noises coming from their flat. The evidence suggests that the neighbour’s claims were justified. 
  8. In its stage 2 response, the landlord said it could have been clearer about the fact that it would not re-open its investigation unless the resident provided evidence at times during 2022 and apologised for this. While it might have been better had it done so, the landlord had been clear on several occasions in late 2022 and early 2023 about the need for evidence, so this was not a service failure, and an apology was sufficient. Overall, the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns was in line with its policy and good practice.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s reports of antisocial behaviour (ASB) and noise nuisance from a neighbour.