Clarion Housing Association Limited (202326870)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202326870

Clarion Housing Association Limited

29 November 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 concerns about staff conduct during a telephone call.

Background

2. The resident has been an assured tenant of the landlord, a housing association, since 2022. The property is a 2-bedroom house. The resident’s daughter resides with her in the property.
3. At the time of these events, the landlord was targeted by a cyber-attack. This meant that it was forced to work offline and was unable to use its usual IT functions, such as call making and recording systems. As a result, its staff were using personal phones to make calls, and records and information were sometimes not captured or were lost.
4. On 1 November 2022, a call took place between the resident and the landlord where she reported issues she considered to be antisocial behaviour (ASB). The resident logged a complaint following the call. She said the operative was unprofessional, rude, and hung up on her because she was not getting her way. She said the operative refused to listen to her concerns or offer positive solutions.
5. In its stage 1 response of 23 November 2022, the landlord said the operative’s manager had reviewed the call and concluded it was conducted in line with the landlord’s policies and procedures. It said the resident became increasingly frustrated during the call and it was, therefore, terminated due to the manner in which she was speaking to the operative.
6. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 on 24 November 2022 and said that she did not accept that the call ended because of her behaviour. She said the operative had failed to investigate her reports of ASB and had thereby allowed it to continue. She requested a copy of the call recording.
7. The landlord issued its stage 2 response on 16 February 2023. It said some wrong information had been provided in the stage 1 response, apologised for this, and explained that as the outbound call was ‘probably’ made from a mobile it was not recorded. While it was unable to listen to the call, it had spoken with the operative and reviewed the details of the call recorded after its conclusion.
8. The landlord went on to summarise the issues reported by the resident and said they did not meet the threshold to trigger the ASB process. Therefore, the operative correctly followed the landlord’s ASB policy and procedure. It apologised for the delay in responding to the complaint and for the earlier misinformation and offered £100 compensation (£50 for the delay and £50 for the misinformation). An additional £25 was offered for a separate issue.
9. The landlord issued an addendum to its stage 2 response on 28 April 2023. It explained that, due to the cyber-attack nearly all its systems were shut down, including the telephones. It was forced to rely on the use of staff’s personal phones (mobile and landline), and manual notes and reports were made and added after the system came back online. It made the decision to do this to provide as near normal a service as possible; this is why its stage 2 response said the call was ‘probably’ made from a mobile. It said it took staff complaints very seriously and investigated them in full using all the available information.
10. The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response and in April 2023 she escalated her complaint to this Service. She said the landlord had failed to take the matter seriously and she continued to face ASB by her neighbours. She wanted the landlord to investigate the member of staff who handled her call.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

11. The Ombudsman does not consider or comment on how a landlord should deal with individual members of staff’s disciplinary proceedings. We cannot order the landlord to take disciplinary action against individual staff members, or order remedies from individual staff such as personal apologies. This is in accordance with the Scheme, which states that this Service will not consider complaints which concern terms of employment or other personnel issues (paragraph 42.h of the Scheme).
12. Instead, it is this Service’s role to decide whether the landlord adequately investigated and responded to the complaint, and took proportionate action based on the information available to it. For staff conduct complaints, landlords should carry out an investigation. This may include conducting interviews and gathering evidence to make an informed decision based on the evidence it has available.
13. The resident has also logged other complaints with the landlord about other issues such as ASB, responsive repairs, and data breaches. Her complaint about its handling of her reports of ASB and responsive repairs has been referred to this Service for consideration under reference 202302119. She has also been advised that complaints about data breaches are not within the remit of this Service. This report, therefore, only considers the telephone call of November 2022 which is the subject of the complaint. Any reference to the issues of ASB are made only in so far as they relate to that complaint.
14. It should also be noted that it is not the role of the Ombudsman to establish the validity of the ASB report made. Instead, it is for this Service to assess the landlord’s handling of the report and determine whether it acted in accordance with relevant policies and procedures, and whether its actions were fair and reasonable in all the circumstances of the case. 

The resident’s concerns about staff conduct during a telephone call

15. The landlord’s ASB policy sets out behaviour it considers to be antisocial and how it responds to reports. It also sets out a non-exhaustive list of issues that it does not deal with as ASB. Amongst these examples, it lists staring/ignoring people, children playing, everyday living household noise, minor disputes between neighbours or personal differences, and actions that amount to unpleasantness. The landlord expects residents to try to resolve disagreements and disputes in the first instance by talking to their neighbours and reaching a mutual understanding. It further says that the landlord will not conduct a full investigation into every report of ASB if the threshold to qualify as such was not met.
16. In the absence of a call recording, this Service has relied upon the call notes and the testimonies provided by both the resident and the operative. The notes made by the operative following the call list the incidents the resident reported as: noise from children playing; children walking past her property and car; children looking at her and her car; adults staring at her; and the neighbour’s cat making a mess in her garden. During the call, the resident also said that she was using a sonic device to deter the cat, but this was annoying one of her neighbours.
17. The notes say that the operative tried to gather more information about the sonic device as she was concerned it might be a nuisance to other residents. The notes say the resident was annoyed by this attempt and told the operative that she was not listening, lacked knowledge of the subject matter, and was unable to communicate properly. The resident then explained to the operative what ‘proper’ communication was and comments were made about the ‘bad’ reputation the landlord had which the resident was finding out firsthand; the operative felt the tone of the call became confrontational.
18. It was further noted that the operative tried to give advice on the issues raised, but the resident became increasingly irate and aggressive, and the call became unproductive. Therefore, the operative suggested ending the call and resuming after she had discussed the matter with her manager. However, the resident insisted that the operative remain on the call and listen to what she had to say. The operative said she felt unable to engage in the conversation as she was repeatedly interrupted or cut off. Therefore, the decision was made to end the call.
19. The resident logged a complaint about the operative the same day, saying the operative’s behaviour towards her was antisocial, that she was more in favour of someone destroying the resident’s property (as opposed to supporting the resident’s action to deter the cat), and that the landlord had a reputation she had heard and now experienced herself. These comments are similar or in line with what the operative noted about the content of the call, which supports the veracity of the call events as noted.
20. Following the termination of the call, the operative followed up internally with the neighbourhood response officer who confirmed that the issues raised by the resident did not meet the threshold for ASB. As the resident then logged her complaint and that process took over, the operative had no further involvement in the assessment or handling of the ASB reports. Therefore, the resident’s report of ASB on the call was handled in line with the landlord’s policy and process.
21. Evidence shows that the landlord investigated the allegations made by the resident; the operative was interviewed, and her manager was involved in the review. This is in line with this Service’s expectations. There is no evidence to suggest that the call was ended because the operative felt she was not getting her own way during it. Instead, it is this Service’s expectation, and accepted good practice, that if a call is deemed to be unproductive or otherwise becoming unreasonable then a warning is issued, and if the behaviour continues then the call may be terminated; and this is what happened.
22. Although the landlord gave some incorrect information to the resident in its stage 1 response about the steps taken to review her concerns, it later recognised its error and apologised, awarding compensation for it; this is in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance. It also provided feedback to the member of staff who had made the error in its stage 1 response to ensure it did not happen again. These actions demonstrate that the landlord took the complaint seriously, openly acknowledged areas for improvement, and took action to rectify the identified failings. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s Dispute Resolution Principles: be fair; put things right; and learn from outcomes.
23. In light of the above, the Ombudsman has found no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns about staff conduct on the telephone call and no further action is necessary to put things right.

Determination

24. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was no maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the resident’s concerns about staff conduct on a telephone call.

Recommendation

25. The landlord should make any part of the offered payment to the resident that it has not already done so.