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Orbit Housing Association Limited (202222668)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202222668

Orbit Housing Association Limited

30 August 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 response to:
    1. The resident’s reports of leaks and mould in the property’s bathroom.
    2. The associated formal complaint.

Background

  1. The resident is the assured tenant of the property which is a flat owned by the landlord.
  2. In June, August and September 2022, the resident reported that there was water leaking from around the toilet or the bath in the bathroom. She reported the same problem again on 7 October 2022.
  3. The resident complained formally about the landlord’s failure to mend the leak on 18 October 2022. She said she had first reported the leak in August and the landlord had done nothing until October. In October, 3 plumbers had visited and left without fixing the leak. The first plumber said the leak came from the toilet, the second plumber said it originated from the bath. The third plumber said they could not find a leak. She said there had been leaks each year for 3 years and the property suffered from mould and damp. The leaks had damaged her carpets.
  4. On 20 October 2022, the resident reported the leak again and the landlord’s contractors attended during an out-of-hours emergency call. The contractor discovered that the leak was not coming from the toilet but from the water pipes to the bath and had clearly been happening for a long time.
  5. In its stage 1 complaint response on 16 November 2022, the landlord said that it had no record of the resident raising the matter before October 2022. It had scheduled an appointment to repair the leak on 28 November 2022. It apologised and offered the resident £58 in compensation consisting of £35 in recognition of a service failure and a £23 award for the fact that the repair would be completed 23 working days later than it should have been.
  6. Following the resident’s escalation request, the landlord provided a stage 2 complaint response on 23 June 2023. It said that, when attending on 28 November 2022, its contractors were unable to mend the leak. It had therefore arranged for the resident and her family to be housed in alternative accommodation on 4 January 2023. It had then repaired the leak and redecorated the flat and the resident had moved back into the property on 24 February 2023.
  7. The landlord apologised again for the inconvenience and frustration caused to the resident and offered her a further £831.91 in compensation. This included £200 for distress and inconvenience, £150 for poor complaint handling and a 20% rent rebate between 9 October 2022 and 24 February 2023. This came to a total of £888.91, including the stage 1 offer.
  8. The resident was not satisfied with this response and came to this Service.

Assessment and findings

The scope of the investigation

  1. The resident made 2 further reports of leaks in May and June 2023 after the landlord had renovated the bathroom. These events occurred after the resident’s complaint of October 2022 and therefore did not form part of that complaint. The Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme) says, at paragraph 42.a, that the Ombudsman may not generally investigate complaints which “are made prior to having exhausted a member’s complaints procedure”.
  2. For that reason, these matters have not been considered in this investigation. The resident may wish to complain formally about them to the landlord in the first instance and, if still dissatisfied, come to this Service which will consider them under a separate complaint number.

The resident’s reports of leaks and mould in her bathroom.

  1. The landlord’s repairs policy says it will respond to reports of emergency repairs within 24 hours and will deal with routine repairs within 28 days.
  2. The landlord says on its website that it will deal with reports of damp and mould as a priority. It will contact a resident within 5 days of a report of the issue and it will inspect within 28 days, depending on availability. If there is a child in the house, the landlord will arrange an inspection within 5 days. The inspector will produce a report.
  3. The Ombudsman issued a special report, Spotlight on Damp and Mould, It’s not lifestyle, in October 2021. This report set out the Ombudsman’s findings on damp and mould and set out recommendations for how landlords should deal with the issue in future. It states, “The outcome of surveys, and any other inspection at the resident’s property, should be routinely shared with, and explained to, the resident”.
  4. The resident stated, in her complaint, that she had originally reported the leaks at the property in August 2022. It is unclear why the landlord claimed not to have received her report of August 2022. Its spreadsheet of reported problems shows that the resident complained of a leaking bath in June 2022 and of water coming through a light fitting from the same leak in August and September 2022. There is no evidence that the landlord responded to any of these reports, which was not in line with its commitments set out in its policy.
  5. When the landlord attended to investigate the leak in October 2022, the records show that its contractors were initially unable to discover the exact source with some saying it was from the toilet and others from the bath. However, they found it had been happening for some time. The resident raised the issue of damp and mould in her complaint on 18 October 2022. There is no evidence that the landlord responded to it. This was a further failure.
  6. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord agreed to send contractors on 28 November 2022 to repair the leak. When it did so, it realised that it was not possible to complete the works. It returned on 13 December 2022 and found that the problem was more serious than it had previously understood. The landlord then decided, after further delays, that the resident should move into a hotel while the works were done. The resident moved into the alternative accommodation from 4 January 2023 until 24 February 2023.
  7. While the resident was in alternative accommodation, the landlord replaced the bathroom and redecorated. In June 2023, in its stage 2 complaint response, it admitted to its failures. It apologised, explained the findings of its stage 2 review and offered her compensation of £881.91.
  8. This was an appropriate complaint response to the problems the resident suffered from November 2022 onwards. However, in its complaint response, the landlord did not address or apologise for its failure to deal with the leak in June 2022 when she first reported it. Thus, its response was not thorough in considering the issues.
  9. The landlord offered the resident a total of £888.91. In its stage 1 response, it awarded her £35 in for its service failure and £23 for the delay in completing the works . It offered her a further £831.91 at stage 2 which included £200 for the distress and inconvenience caused by its failures and a 20% rent rebate for the poor state of the bathroom between 15 November 2022 and 24 February 2023.
  10. The landlord seems to have used the date of 15 November 2022 as the start date for the rent rebate because it was the day before the stage 1 complaint response. However, as is set out above, the resident in fact first reported the leak on 14 June 2022, some 4 months earlier. The landlord failed in its complaint responses to remedy either the inconvenience and frustration or the loss of use during this period. An order to reflect this has been set out below.
  11. The resident said, in her response to the stage 1 decision, that she was not interested in compensation and, instead wanted service improvements. This Service has considered ordering a review of the landlord’s policies and practices around repairs. However, we recently identified failures in its handling of repairs in a previous case, case number 202203675. This decision was issued after the events set out in this report. In it, we made an order requiring the landlord to review its handling of reports of repairs caused by damp, mould and leaks. For that reason, we have not ordered a similar review in this case. However, we expect it to take forward the lessons and improvements it shared with this Service after the wider order and will monitor its progress in doing so.

The associated formal complaint.

  1. The landlord’s complaints policy says it will respond to complaints at stage 2 within 20 working days of an escalation request. It defines a complaint as “’An expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions, or lack of action” by the landlord. It says a complaint will be raised when a customer expresses dissatisfaction with the response to a service request, even if the handling of the service request is ongoing.
  2. The landlord’s compensation guidance says it will offer payments of up to £150 for complaint handling errors.
  3. In this case, the resident responded to the stage 1 complaint response the same day that she received it. In her response, she was clear that she was not satisfied with that response. The landlord did not treat this as an escalation request as it should have done. It did not provide a complaint response finally until June 2023, some 7 months later.
  4. There were some reasons for the delay because, in the interim, the landlord discovered, and then addressed serious problems at the property which required her to be temporarily rehoused. It offered the resident £150 for complaint handling errors. This amount is in line with its policy and falls within the range recommended in this Service’s remedies guidance for similar matters. This report, therefore, concludes that this was an appropriate response to its failure.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme), there was service failure by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s reports of leaks and mould at the property.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 53.b. of the Scheme, the landlord made an offer of reasonable redress in relation to the associated formal complaint which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolves this complaint satisfactorily. 

Orders and recommendations

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord must pay the resident £1450, a rounded-up figure which is inclusive of the £888.91 already offered. The additional element consists of:
    1. £420 which represents a 20% rent rebate between 12 July 2022 and 14 November 2022.
    2. £130 for the additional inconvenience and frustration over the same period caused by the landlord’s failures to address or remedy the leaks at the property.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord should share any reports it has commissioned or prepared about damp and mould at the property with the resident.