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Sanctuary Housing Association (202406391)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202406391

Sanctuary Housing Association

8 April 2025


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 a roof leak and subsequent damp and mould.
  2. We have also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident has an assured tenancy with the landlord, which is a housing association. The property is a 2-storey house.
  2. The resident said she first raised reports of a leak in her roof in October 2022.
  3. On 30 March 2023 the resident contacted the landlord again and reported that she had moved her belongings out of the loft due to the leak.
  4. On 10 October 2023 the resident raised a formal complaint with the landlord as it had not contacted her about the leak. She said the house was freezing and leak had damaged her children’s childhood memories.
  5. On 23 October 2023 the landlord issued its stage 1 complaint response. It said an operative attended the property on 21 June 2023. The operative advised there was no leak but there was an issue with the ventilation and insulation. It added it had delayed raising a quote and offered £250 in compensation for the delays and inconvenience it had caused to the resident.
  6. The resident contacted the landlord on a number of occasions between October 2023 and April 2024 due to the delays in repairs being completed.
  7. On 23 January 2024 the resident raised a further complaint regarding the delays in repairs being completed.
  8. In March 2024 the resident further escalated her complaint due to lack of   response from the landlord.
  9.  The landlord issued its stage 2 complaint response on 4 April 2024. It apologised to the resident and confirmed the reasons for the delays. It also set out the next steps and issued further compensation of £750.
  10. On 10 April 2024 the landlord issued a revised stage 2 response. It confirmed details of the next steps and increased its compensation offer from £750 to £1,250.
  11. The resident continued to chase the landlord on a number of occasions throughout 2024.
  12. On 24 May 2024, the resident bought her complaint to us. She has recently told us that all the repairs were completed by end of November 2024.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. During the period of the complaint, the resident has raised concerns about how the issues were affecting her children’s health. The Ombudsman is unable to make determinations of the cause of, or liability for the impacts of health and wellbeing. Such a determination is more appropriate through an insurance claim or by a court. Should the resident wish to pursue a claim relating to the impact on her and her family’s health, she has the option to seek legal advice.
  2. The Ombudsman has, however, considered any distress and inconvenience the resident may have experienced as a result of errors by the landlord.
  3. The landlord’s handling on the resident’s reports of a roof leak and subsequent damp and mould.
  4. The resident’s tenancy agreement stated that the landlord shall maintain and where appropriate keep in proper working order the structure of the property including the roof. This reflects the landlord’s obligations under section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
  5. The landlord’s repairs policy says appointed repairs are all non-emergency repairs. It will agree an appointment with the resident during the first point of contact, wherever possible. It says it aims to complete all appointed repairs within 28 days. The tenancy handbook makes it clear that the landlord will undertake any necessary repairs within the timescales it promises.
  6. The resident said she first reported a leak in her roof on 11 October 2022, the landlord had this date as 19 December 2022. Although, there is a discrepancy in the date it does not change the outcome in this case.
  7. In its stage 1 complaint response, the landlord referred to a visit to the property on 21 June 2023 where it said the contractor identified problems with the ventilation, rather than a leak from the roof. We have not seen any evidence of this visit. This visit is 6 months outside the landlord’s 28 day response timescale and is an unreasonable amount of time which amounts to a service failure.
  8. The landlord’s internal records show that when the resident contacted it at the end of March 2023, it escalated the matter and raised a job due to no communication from the planning and admin team. This work was cancelled mid-April 2023 because the contractor was not available.
  9. From the evidence available, the resident spent an unreasonable amount of time chasing for updates, attempting to drive matters forward and following up with the landlord when contractors did not attend appointments over a 2 year period. Even though the landlord chased the contractor on a number of occasions between March 2023 and October 2023, these were done after the resident contacted it. The burden of following up responses from the landlord should not fall upon the resident and this was a service failure.
  10. Due to delays with the original contractors, the landlord engaged with new ones. While it is unclear how many contractors were involved during this period, it was reasonable for the landlord to try to change contractors in response to delayed communication or performance.
  11. Although some delays were caused by the contractors, the landlord also noted significant internal communication issues that contributed to a delay in raising the purchase order for the repair works, as well as a surveyor visiting the property twice for the same issue. In its complaint responses the landlord recognised these shortcomings and offered compensation of £1,100 which included £400 for damaged belongings.
  12. Where the landlord has accepted it has made errors, it is our role to consider whether the redress it offered put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. In considering this we take into account whether the landlord’s offer of redress was in line with our Dispute Resolution Principles: Be Fair, Put Things Right and Learn from Outcomes as well as our own guidance on remedies.
  13. The amount offered by the landlord is in line with our remedies guidance which says compensation above £1,000 is appropriate for instances of maladministration where there have been serious, repeated, and significant failings by the landlord.
  14. Given the landlord’s offer of compensation, along with its acknowledgement of the impact caused to the resident and its apology we have found that the landlord had made reasonable redress to the resident at the time of the revised stage 2 complaint response in April 2024.
  15.  However, we can see the repair works remained unresolved until around November 2024. We have therefore made a recommendation that the landlord pays the resident a further £300 for the inconvenience and frustration caused by that further. Although a landlord does not have to follow recommendations we have made, we have done so with the intention of trying to resolve any outstanding dispute.

Complaint handling

  1. The landlord operates a 2-stage complaints procedure. It aims to acknowledge stage 1 complaints within 3 working days of receipt and to respond within 10 working days. It aims to respond to stage 2 complaints within 20 working days of an escalation request.
  2. The landlord re-opened the stage 1 complaint at the end of December 2023 following a new webform complaint from the resident.
  3. The resident then escalated her complaint to stage 2 on 23 January 2024. This was acknowledged by the landlord on 29 January 2024, but it did not issue the stage 2 complaint response until 4 April 2024. This was 31 working days over its timeframes for issuing stage 2 complaint responses and amounts to a service failure.
  4. The landlord acknowledged that there were delays in its stage 2 complaint response and offered the resident £150 for the inconvenience caused.
  5. The landlord’s compensation policy says it may pay compensation of £75 to £150 for delays in giving a response leading to increased contact from the resident. The sum offered was also in line with our remedies guidance which says such sums are appropriate where there was a service failure that adversely affected the resident but which had no permanent impact. We therefore consider the landlord’s apology and offer of compensation was a reasonable and proportionate step to take to reflect the inconvenience and frustration caused to the resident by the landlord’s complaint handling delay.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 53.b of the Scheme, there was ‘reasonable redress’ in the landlord’s handling of:
    1. the resident’s reports of a roof leak and subsequent damp and mould.
    2. the associated complaint.
  2. The landlord has offered reasonable redress to the resident which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion, resolved the complaint satisfactorily.

Recommendations

  1. We recommend the landlord pays the resident:
  2. An additional £300 for the delays in completing repairs from the end of May to November 2024.
  3. The £1,250 it offered within its final complaint response, if it has not yet done so. The finding of reasonable redress has been based on the landlord making this payment to the resident.