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Peabody Trust (202229340)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202229340

Peabody Trust

12 September 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 repairs to the property following the resident’s reports of damp and mould.
  2. The Ombudsman will also investigate the landlord’s handling of the resident’s complaint.

Background

  1. The resident lives in the property, owned by the landlord, under an assured tenancy. The property is a 1-bedroom flat and the resident has lived there since April 2020.
  2. On 24 December 2022 the resident completed a webform asking the landlord to raise a complaint. He said that he had raised several previous concerns about leaking, cold, mould and damp in the property over the last 4 years and there had been no improvement, despite work being carried out. The landlord emailed him on 28 December to confirm that a complaint had been raised already.
  3. The resident chased the landlord on 4 January 2023, saying that he had heard nothing further and the damp and mould had worsened. He said his health issues were worsening and he had no option but to leave his flat and sleep on a friend’s sofa. He asked to be rehoused urgently.
  4. The landlord carried out a mould and damp assessment on 12 January 2023 which identified damp and mould throughout the property and found the external walls were showing signs of a possible problem with the roof. The report said that scaffolding was required to access the roof to inspect it.
  5. The resident continued to chase the landlord between 13 January 2023 and 6 February, saying that it was aware there was a problem and asking what the next steps would be. He again said he was not able to live in the property and said he was sleeping rough. On 7 February the landlord said it had raised an order for mould treatment and apologised for the delay. The resident responded to say he had been told he should be decanted and said he wanted to be permanently relocated.
  6. On 20 February 2023 the resident asked for his complaint to be escalated to stage 2 of the landlord’s complaints process due to the landlord’s lack of response. He followed this up with an email to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on 22 February, again asking for escalation. The landlord acknowledged his email to the CEO on 23 February and said it would respond within 10 working days.
  7. The resident continued to chase the landlord for a response throughout March 2023. On 23 March the complaint handler emailed the resident to say they were moving roles and the complaint had been reassigned. There was no further update from the landlord and the resident contacted this Service on 11 May. We wrote to the landlord on 17 May and asked it to send a response.
  8. The landlord sent its stage 1 response on 24 May 2023, in which it apologised for the delayed response. It said it had carried out a mould wash in November 2022 which did not resolve the problem. It said that scaffolding was needed to carry out work and that it was waiting for a licence from the council to put this up. It said it had moved him to temporary accommodation whilst repairs were being carried out but that it would not permanently move him as the property could be repaired.
  9. The resident responded the same day and said that no mould wash had been carried out. He said that the landlord’s response did not note the decant date or acknowledge that he had to move out of the flat in January 2023. He also said he had tried to escalate the complaint already without response.
  10. The landlord sent its stage 2 response on 27 June 2023, in which it apologised for incorrectly saying a mould wash had been carried out in November 2022. It acknowledged that it had handled the complaint poorly at stage 1 and offered compensation of £150 for the delay and £100 for providing an inaccurate response. It also offered £400 compensation for time, trouble and inconvenience.
  11. On 31 July 2023 the resident responded to the landlord’s stage 2 response saying that it had not provided any compensation for his displacement between January and March 2023, or any reimbursement for damage to his belongings. He said he had been unable to take out home insurance due to structural problems with the building.
  12. In August 2023 the landlord told the resident it was still waiting for a scaffolding licence and said that it had chased this with the council. The resident remained unhappy with the landlord’s actions and on 27 September asked this Service to investigate the complaint.
  13. Work was completed in December 2023 and the resident was able to move back into the property on 5 January 2024. However, he remained unhappy as he said the property was very cold and had condensation.
  14. On 25 May 2024 the landlord offered additional compensation to the resident, acknowledging that repairs took a long time to be completed after its stage 2 response. It offered an additional £100 for time, trouble and inconvenience and £50 for complaint handling. It said that it could not compensate him for his damaged belongings and said he should contact his home insurer. It said he could submit an insurance liability claim to its insurer and provided contact details for them.
  15. On 7 June 2024 the landlord made a final offer of compensation. It increased the time, trouble and inconvenience offer to £650, maintained its £300 offer for complaint handling and also offered £310.78 for room loss, £250 goodwill reimbursement associated with the decant and £150 for the cost of his travel during the decant, bringing the total compensation offer to £1,660.78.

Assessment and findings

Scope of the investigation

  1. The resident said in his initial complaint webform, submitted on 24 December 2022, that he had had ongoing issues with damp for the last 4 years and that he had raised a number of previous complaints. He has provided a timeline of events to this Service, which says that there was work done between May and November 2020, and that the mould and damp reoccurred because this work was inadequate. However, there has been no evidence provided of any further issues before November 2022, 2 years after previous work was completed.
  2. According to paragraph 42(c) of the Scheme, the Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, were not brought to the attention of the member as a formal complaint within a reasonable period which would normally be within 12 months of the matters arising.
  3. This Service has seen no evidence the resident raised a complaint about the quality of the repairs carried out in 2020 within 12 months of them being completed. Additionally, no evidence has been seen that these issues were ongoing between 2020 and 2022. Therefore this investigation will focus on the complaint and the events leading up to it, with reference to historical issues for context only.
  4. The resident has also raised concerns about his health and the impact on this by the issues raised. Whilst this service is an alternative to the courts, it is unable to establish legal liability or whether a landlord’s actions or lack of action have had a detrimental impact on a resident’s health. Nor can it calculate or award damages. The Ombudsman is therefore unable to consider the personal injury aspect of the resident’s complaint. These matters are likely better suited to consideration by a court or via a personal injury claim.

Repairs

  1. The tenancy agreement states that the landlord must keep the structure and exterior of the property in repair including the roof. Its responsive repairs policy sets out a number of different timescales for repairs, ranging from 4 hours for emergency repairs to 60 calendar days for programmed repairs or specialist works.
  2. The landlord’s decant policy states that where it needs to move tenants it will do it quickly, as it only decants where the tenant cannot live in the home.
  3. The records the landlord has provided do not make it clear exactly when the resident first reported the damp and mould problem, however its stage 2 response said it was raised in October 2022 and that a contractor attended on 7 November and found that the property was cold, although the heating was not on. In its stage 1 response it said that a mould wash was also carried out at this time, however it later said that this was not the case, indicating a concern with the thoroughness of its complaint investigation and potentially its knowledge and information management.
  4. The resident completed a complaint webform on 24 December 2022, in which he said he was very concerned about the conditions he was living in. He sent a further email on 28 December in which he said he had raised this issue several times over the previous 4 weeks.
  5. The landlord’s records do not show that it had taken any further action since the contractor had visited on 7 November 2022, and it has not provided a copy of any report from this contractor to show what was assessed at that time. On 4 January 2023 the resident contacted the landlord to say that he needed to be rehoused urgently and was leaving the property to sleep on a friend’s sofa as the damp and mouldy conditions were affecting his health.
  6. The landlord responded to this email on 12 January 2023 with a basic acknowledgement and said the email had been ‘added to the case’. However, it did not respond to his request to be rehoused, or acknowledge that he had said he could not continue living in the property. The landlord carried out a mould and damp assessment on 12 January 2023 which found 14 defects, with damp and mould present throughout the property. The report said that the roof needed to be inspected and that scaffolding was required to do this.
  7. The landlord’s damp and mould policy says that it will treat reports of damp and mould as urgent repairs and that where the work required is extensive it will temporarily rehouse the resident. Despite the resident contacting the landlord several times over the next week asking about next steps, its records do not show that it took any immediate action. It also has not demonstrated that it considered the safety of the property at that time, despite the resident repeatedly raising concerns about this, and so it failed to act in line with its policy.
  8. On 14 February 2023 the resident told the landlord that he had been contacted by contractors about dehumidifiers. He expressed concerns about what work would be carried out as he said previous work had only covered up problems. He again reiterated that he was sofa-surfing and asked to be permanently moved.
  9. In its stage 2 response the landlord said that a decant was agreed in February, however its booking records show that alternative accommodation was not arranged until 23 March 2023. It has provided no explanation for why it took more than 3 weeks to decant the resident from when it was agreed, or why it took 11 weeks to move him after he told it he would be leaving the property. The landlord did not demonstrate urgency, despite the severity of the situation and did not act appropriately.
  10. The resident chased the landlord several times during March 2023 to find out what work was going to be carried out. He also asked if his belongings would be put in storage whilst work was carried out. The landlord told him that it could not confirm what work needed to be done until contractors had carried out an inspection. It said that it would discuss storage of his furniture with its housing team.
  11. In its stage 1 response of 24 May 2023 the landlord said that it was making every effort to get repairs completed and so would not consider a permanent move for the resident. It said that scaffolding was needed to carry out work and that it had to get a licence for this from the council, which it was still waiting for.
  12. In relation to the resident’s damaged belongings, the landlord said that he should initially claim through his home insurance, however if he believed the landlord to be liable for the damage, he could claim through its insurance. It did not provide any information for its insurers at that time.
  13. In its stage 2 response of 27 June 2023 the landlord acknowledged that the resident had told his neighbourhood manager he had moved out of the property in January but that the stage 1 complaint handler had not been able to confirm this was the case. Whilst it did offer £400 compensation for time, trouble and inconvenience it did not make it clear what this was for, and whether this was in relation to him having to live with friends for several months.
  14. On 31 July 2023 the resident responded to the stage 2 response. He said that it had not compensated him for his displacement during between January and March 2023, or reimbursed him for the rent whilst he could not live there. It had not reimbursed him for damage to his belongings, and he said he could not take out home insurance due to structural problems in the flat since he moved in.
  15. On 7 August 2023 the resident asked questions about the repairs and the landlord responded to say that the main delay was with the scaffold certificates. It has not provided any evidence to show that it had proactively chased the council for the scaffolding licence, despite it having identified the need for this almost 7 months earlier.
  16. It was not until 29 November 2023 that the landlord contacted the resident to let him know that contractors were ready to carry out the internal repairs and asked him to provide access for contractors. However, on 4 December he emailed the landlord to say that he had been to the property that weekend and found evidence of water ingress.
  17. The landlord carried out an inspection on 8 December 2023, where it found that there was a new leak beneath the chimney stack which needed to be repaired. Whilst this Service appreciates the landlord had carried out work to successfully fix the earlier leak, given the difficulties it had with arranging for scaffolding, it should have arranged for the whole roof to be inspected to ensure that there were no other issues. This additional leak led to further delays in the resident being able to move back into the property.
  18. The resident was able to move back into the property on 5 January 2024 and on 16 January he emailed the landlord to report paint damage to his belongings as the items had not been covered. He also said that the property was extremely cold and had condensation. Thermal imaging was done and on 12 February the landlord sent the resident a heat loss report and said some work may be needed in the living room.
  19. On 12 March 2024 the resident reported mould developing again and the landlord responded the same day to say that it had booked a job with the repairs team and a surveyor would attend. The landlord has not provided any evidence of this survey being carried out, or of any further repairs being completed to resolve the mould issue.
  20. On 28 May 2024 the landlord offered the resident further compensation of £100 for time, trouble and inconvenience. It then emailed him again on 7 June apologising for its failings and made a further offer in relation to the repairs totalling £1,360.78, broken down as follows:
    1. £650 total compensation for time, trouble and inconvenience.
    2. £310.78 for room loss, however it does not explain how this was calculated.
    3. £250 goodwill reimbursement associated with the decant.
    4. £150 for travel costs during the decant.
  21. In its email of 28 May 2024, the landlord also provided contact details for its insurer, should the resident wish to submit an insurance liability claim. Whilst this Service acknowledges that it has provided the resident with this information, he made it aware on 31 July 2023 that he did not have home insurance, so it should have provided him with its insurance details at that time.
  22. The Ombudsman considers there to have been severe maladministration by the landlord in its handling of repairs to the property. Whilst it has taken steps to try to put things right since the completion of its internal complaints process, this was done too late, and it did not fully recognise the impact its failures had on the resident.
  23. The landlord took too long initially to carry out the mould and damp assessment. It was very clear from this assessment that there was damp and mould throughout the property but the landlord did not act urgently to decant the resident or carry out the repairs. It failed to act in line with its repairs policy timescales in completing the repairs, as these took more than 12 months to complete. The Ombudsman appreciates that the landlord required a licence to put up scaffolding, but no evidence has been provided to show when it first requested this, or the follow up action it took to try to get this licence granted.
  24. The resident was left in a position where he felt that he had to move out of the property and sleep on a friend’s sofa, and had to wait several months for the landlord to provide alternative accommodation. Whilst the landlord provided a compensation payment for room loss, this did not cover his full rent for the period where he had nowhere to live. Given that the mould and damp assessment showed mould and damp throughout the property, it is not reasonable for the landlord not to have considered a full rent refund for that period.
  25. An order has been made for the landlord to pay rent related compensation. Taking into consideration that the mould and damp assessment reported issues throughout the property, this has been calculated as follows:
    1. 100% of the rent for the period from 4 January 2023 when the resident reported that he needed to move out of the property, until 23 March 2023 when he was given alternative accommodation (approximately 11 weeks at £129.49) – £1,424.39.
    2. Less the £310.78 it has already offered for room loss, if this has already been paid.
  26. An order has also been made for the landlord to pay the resident further compensation of £350. This is to recognise the distress and inconvenience caused by the severe delays and poor handling of the repairs, taking into account the landlord’s offers made after the conclusion of its internal complaints process, and the delay to making these offers. This brings the total compensation and reimbursement for this issue to £2,974.39.
  27. An order has also been made for the landlord to carry out a full damp and mould survey, to include heat loss, to establish the cause of the ongoing mould issue, if this has not already been carried out. The landlord should provide a copy of its report to this Service and the resident within 8 weeks of this report, as well as a schedule of works, if required.

Complaint handling

  1. Landlords must have an effective complaint process to provide a good service to their residents. An effective complaint process means landlords can fix problems quickly, learn from their mistakes and build good relationships with residents. In this case the landlord’s complaint process lacked customer focus and took too long.
  2. The landlord’s complaints policy says that it will respond to complaints within 10 working days at stage 1 and 20 working days at stage 2.
  3. The resident raised the complaint via the landlord’s webform on 24 December 2022. The landlord emailed him on 28 December saying that a complaint had already been raised, but it did not say when and no evidence of an earlier complaint has been seen by this Service.
  4. Despite regular contact from the resident chasing a response, by February 2023 the landlord had not provided a stage 1 response. The resident contacted the landlord’s CEO on 22 February asking for the complaint to be escalated to stage 2 due to the lack of response. The following day the landlord acknowledged the complaint and said it would respond within 10 working days.
  5. The resident continued to chase the landlord for a response and on 24 March 2023 the landlord’s complaint handler emailed him to say they were leaving the role and the complaint was being reassigned. As he had not had an update or response, the resident contacted this service on 11 May to ask for help. This Service contacted the landlord on 17 May and asked it to send a response.
  6. The landlord sent the stage 1 response on 24 May 2023, 5 months after the resident raised the complaint. This far exceeded the timescale in the landlord’s complaint policy and was not in line with the Ombudsman’s complaint handling code.
  7. Whilst it apologised for the delay it did not appear to recognise how severe the delay was and did not offer any redress at this stage. From the records provided it is not evident that the landlord logged the complaint in December 2022, as it did not send an official acknowledgement until the resident emailed the CEO in February 2023.
  8. When the complaint was reassigned in March 2023, the new complaint handler did not introduce themselves or provide any update before sending the stage 1 response 2 months later.
  9. The resident responded to the landlord’s stage 1 response on the same day, making it clear that he was unhappy with the response. The landlord sent its stage 2 response on 27 June 2023, 23 working days after it was escalated, slightly outside the policy timescale.
  10. At this stage the landlord did acknowledge the delays in its complaint handling and recognised that he had to contact this Service in order to get a response. It also accepted that there had been some inaccuracies in its stage 1 response. It offered £250 to recognise these failings – £150 for its complaint handling and £100 for the inaccuracies in the stage 1 response.
  11. The resident responded to the landlord on 26 July 2023 saying that he was unhappy with the compensation and reimbursement amounts offered. At this time he also said that he had been unable to take out home insurance due to structural problems with the building.
  12. This Service has seen no evidence that the landlord responded to this comment. However, we have also seen no evidence to support the allegation of structural issues or that the resident could not obtain home insurance due to something the landlord had done wrong. Therefore this Service cannot conclude that the landlord should pay in full for the resident’s damaged belongings. Whilst this comment was made to the landlord after the conclusion of its internal complaints process, it should have responded to this comment, and failed to do so.
  13. On 28 May 2024 the landlord sent a further offer of compensation, acknowledging that repairs had taken a long time after the stage 2 response to be completed. It offered an additional £50 for complaint handling as well as the additional redress for the repairs issue as detailed above.
  14. On 7 June 2024 the landlord sent a final offer of redress. The compensation for complaint handling remained at £300 however it increased the redress for repairs again as detailed above.
  15. The Ombudsman considers there to have been maladministration by the landlord in relation to its handling of the resident’s complaint. Whilst it is recognised that the landlord did offer the resident £300, it did not fully recognise the extent of its failings.
  16. The landlord took far too long to respond to the complaint at stage 1, despite the resident contacting it on many occasions to point out that he had not had a response. It was not until this Service became involved that it sent a response, which was not appropriate. Despite the severe delay at stage 1, it failed to offer any redress to put things right.
  17. The landlord also failed to make its final offer of redress during its internal complaint process. Its final offer of redress was not made until more than 18 months after the complaint was raised.
  18. An order has been made for the landlord to pay the resident additional compensation of £200 to recognise the distress and inconvenience caused by its complaint handling failures. This brings the total compensation for complaint handling to £500.
  19. A recommendation has also been made for the landlord to contact the resident to discuss his concerns about his inability to obtain home contents insurance, progressing this issue through its internal complaints process if appropriate.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the scheme, there was severe maladministration by the landlord in relation to its handling of repairs to the property following the resident’s reports of damp and mould.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the scheme, there was maladministration by the landlord in relation to its handling of the resident’s complaint.

Orders

  1. The landlord to pay the resident total compensation of £3,324.39, less any amount already paid, made up of:
    1. £1,424.39 of rent related compensation.
    2. £1,000 to recognise the distress and inconvenience.
    3. £250 goodwill reimbursement associated with the decant.
    4. £150 for travel costs during the decant.
    5. £500 to recognise the landlord’s complaint handling failures.
  2. The landlord to provide evidence of compliance with the above order to this Service within 28 days of this report.
  3. The landlord to carry out a full damp and mould survey, to include heat loss, to establish the cause of the ongoing mould issue, if this has not already been carried out. The landlord should provide a copy of its report to this Service and the resident within 8 weeks of this report, as well as a schedule of works, if required.
  4. The landlord to carry out a review of its complaint handling process to identify what led to the failures in its handling of this complaint to ensure that this is not repeated. The landlord to provide a copy of this review to this Service within 8 weeks of this report.

Recommendation

  1. The landlord to contact the resident to discuss his concerns about his inability to obtain home contents insurance, progressing this issue through its internal complaints process if appropriate.