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Accent Housing Limited (202230268)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202230268

Accent Housing Limited

4 July 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 heating repairs and boiler replacement.
  2. The Ombudsman has also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident has been a weekly periodic tenant of the landlord since 2010. The property is a 3-bedroom semi-detached house. The landlord is a housing association.
  2. On 26 August 2022, the resident contacted the landlord about her boiler. She said it was scheduled to be replaced 2-3 years ago, but after the initial correspondence she had heard nothing further. She said an engineer had recently visited to service the boiler and said it needed to be replaced, and that plumbers had previously said the heating system was ‘ancient’.
  3. She was concerned she could be paying extra to heat the property as the boiler was not functioning properly and she could not afford that with the increased cost of living. She said she had logged 3 repairs recently, including one that day, as the boiler was making so much noise she had to turn it off. She asked the landlord to check why the boiler had not been replaced as planned and to confirm when it would be. The landlord did not reply.
  4. The resident contacted the landlord again on 12 December 2022 to request support with the rising cost of heating the property and advised that she was experiencing food insecurity as a result. The landlord responded with an offer to make a referral to get support in place and to send her a food parcel; it also said the matter would be discussed with a manager. The resident accepted the offer but did not hear back from the landlord; she did not receive the food parcel or other support.
  5. The resident emailed the landlord again on 31 January 2023 and said an engineer had attended that day to replace the boiler but had encountered issues due to a water leak. She said the engineer also discovered damage caused by a previous repair which meant they did not have the additional parts required to finish the job. She said the engineer told her a tap had been turned off, which then snapped and was left unrepaired, causing water to pool in one place instead of filling the radiators.
  6. In this email, the resident recounted the events of a repair conducted in August 2022 where the attending engineer said they could finish the job in half the scheduled time by turning off the tap instead of draining the system as they were supposed to. She said due to the engineer’s failure to follow procedure she had been left without a fully functioning heating system. This email was logged by the landlord as a complaint the same day (the stage 1 complaint). The new boiler was fitted on 23 February 2023.
  7. In its response of 8 March 2023 (the stage 1 response), the landlord said it had investigated comments provided by the engineer that visited on 31 January 2023, and spoken with the 2 contractors that had attended the property for previous repairs. Due to the nature of the repairs conducted, it was unable to ascertain who was at fault for the ‘poor experience and workmanship’ its engineer had described as the affected part would have been handled during multiple jobs. It acknowledged the job was not completed in the ‘best way’.
  8. The landlord said feedback was provided to both contractors to ensure the mistakes did not repeat, and it had requested an increased frequency of auditing for the engineers who had previously attended the property. The landlord said it hoped the resident would have a positive experience with its services going forward, and that it was sorry she had cause to complain, but made no offer of redress for its identified failures.
  9. The resident, dissatisfied with the landlord’s response, reverted with a detailed email on 13 March 2023, setting out the timeline of events and the difficulties she had encountered (the stage 2 complaint). She said she had notified the landlord the boiler was inefficient, chased for its replacement, and sought support for the increased costs of fuel. She said she had been left with a cold property, increased energy bills trying to keep warm, and her requests for support ignored. She also said that when the boiler replacement was finally scheduled, the landlord failed to book and confirm the appointment in advance. She reminded the landlord that she had repeatedly requested it should not visit without prearranged and confirmed appointments.
  10. She said her vulnerability was well documented on her account, but despite that the landlord had left her struggling. She sought compensation for her distress and inconvenience and the extra cost of heating for the preceding 6-month period. The resident also raised concerns about the delay in the landlord’s response to her complaint. She said the landlord’s complaint policy had not been followed, leading her to chase it.
  11. In the landlord’s response of 21 March 2023 (the first stage 2 response), it acknowledged that communication with the resident about her complaint had been poor, and apologised for its delayed response. It said it was phasing out the contractor the resident had encountered issues with, and had asked both contractors from previous visits not to attend future repairs at the property. Instead a third contractor could be asked to attend future jobs if that suited the resident.
  12. The landlord said that the boiler had been on its 2020-2021 replacement programme but due to the restrictions placed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been unable to complete scheduled works as planned. It apologised that the resident had to wait. It went on to say that feedback had been provided internally to its staff member who failed to respond to the resident’s requests for support. It said the matter had been addressed with them as part of their quarterly performance review. The landlord apologised for its failure to confirm the appointment when it was booked and for failing to provide the service she needed when she needed it the most.
  13. The landlord offered £250 compensation for distress and additional heating costs. It did not set out how it arrived at this figure. It advised the resident of her right to escalate the complaint to this Service if she remained dissatisfied. The resident accepted the offer of £250 on 23 March 2023, and on the same day escalated her complaint to the Ombudsman. She was unsure if the compensation offered was at the right level for the impact on her of the landlord’s poor handling of the heating repairs and boiler replacement and its lack of support.
  14. This Service contacted the landlord in September 2023 to request evidence to assist the Ombudsman’s investigation. In response, the landlord said its Internal Complaints Process (ICP) had not been exhausted as the resident had not escalated the complaint following receipt of its stage 1 response. It also said that the boiler installation was not part of the stage 1 complaint, so it would now investigate this as a new complaint.
  15. The landlord then issued a further complaint response on 26 February 2024 (the second stage 2 response) stating that the stage 1 response had been accurate and true. It repeated the explanation given in the first stage 2 response about the delayed installation due to COVID-19, and said the boiler was replaced per its procedures as part of the 2022-2023 programme.
  16. It said the boiler passed annual gas safety checks from 2020-2022, and that the resident had not raised any new repairs in 2020 and 2021 about the heating system. It said that 6 repairs were raised for the boiler between May-September 2022, and these had left her heating ‘working satisfactorily’.
  17. The landlord further said that the resident had contacted it on 30 December 2022 to report 1 radiator was too hot while 3 others were only warm. It said its contractor attended on 9 January 2023 to fit a new pump and the heating was working adequately when they left.
  18. The landlord said the resident was advised during the visit that her boiler was on the replacement programme, and its contractor recommended a new boiler installation on 10 January 2023 which was authorised the same day. It concluded by saying that the resident had accepted its offer of compensation and had not reverted to request an escalation, but its ICP was now complete. It said it was sorry she had cause to complain and apologised for any inconvenience she experienced.
  19. The resident remained dissatisfied with the landlord’s response and contacted the Ombudsman again on 23 March 2024. She said she had a letter from the landlord showing the boiler was due to be replaced in 2019. She advised she sought further compensation, and an apology from the landlord for its failures.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident has provided this Service with a copy of the letter she received from the landlord about her boiler being on its replacement programme of 2019-2020. However, as the resident did not complain about the landlord’s failure to carry out the work as it advised within 12 months of its failure to do so this schedule of works is not considered in detail in this report (reflected at paragraph 42(c) of the Scheme). However, it has been taken into account where it is relevant to the overall consideration of the current complaint.

The landlord’s handling of the heating repairs and boiler replacement

  1. The landlord accepted its poor service levels in the stage 1 response and the first and second stage 2 responses. Therefore, the question before this Service is whether those failings amount to maladministration and, if so, whether appropriate redress was offered to put things right.
  2. The landlord’s compensation policy sets out when it pays compensation to its residents. It says discretionary compensation is paid where the quality of the service provided has fallen below agreed standards, and for reasonable costs that a customer would not have incurred if not for its service failure. It says the resident’s acceptance of a compensation offer does not prevent them from making a complaint to this Service.
  3. The landlord’s compensation procedure notes the importance of having a ‘fair and transparent approach’ to managing compensation claims and in the payments it makes. It states the intended purpose of its compensation policy and procedure is to ensure ‘a consistent and fair process’, and goes on to set out how its staff should consider compensation requests; notable in this instance is the requirement to establish the impact on the resident and obtaining supporting evidence of financial loss, which it says ‘will always be required’. It further sets out that where there has been a significant service failure that had a damaging impact on the customer, it will award amounts between £50-£500.
  4. It is noted that the government imposed restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic halted routine repair and maintenance work that landlords were able to perform; limiting it to emergencies that posed a health and safety risk. The Ombudsman, therefore, accepts that the 2020-2021 boiler replacement programme would have been impacted by the restrictions.
  5. It is further accepted that the normal resumption of scheduled works would also have been impacted while the landlord caught up with its backlog. However, it is the Ombudsman’s expectation and accepted good practice that the landlord would have informed the resident when it was unable to carry out the planned work. It should also have provided the resident with a revised timeframe and kept her regularly updated with its progress against it; informing her if there were any further changes or delays. It did not do this.
  6. The resident was proactive in seeking to minimise the impact of the situation on her. It is clear from the correspondence she sent the landlord that she was deeply concerned about the efficiency of her boiler (sharing that she thought this was due to age and the overdue replacement) and candid about her struggle with the cost of keeping the property sufficiently warm which was causing financial difficulties.
  7. Around that period, she had logged multiple repair jobs for the boiler and heating system; directly at odds with the absence of repair requests in the 2 years prior, suggesting that there was a developing or escalating issue. The landlord should have taken appropriate steps at that point to investigate the underlying cause for the increased frequency of repairs, especially in light of the concerns being expressed by the resident, and its knowledge that the boiler had been due for replacement at least 2 years before.
  8. However, other than responding to the reported repairs, the landlord did not take proactive action to establish if the boiler was operating as it should or if there might be hidden issues with the heating. While the boiler was on a revised planned schedule of replacement, the landlord should have considered if it might require replacement sooner.
  9. Further, the landlord failed to respond to the resident’s first and early contact which should have given it a prompt to investigate; and if it had, the investigation would have revealed the earlier repair that was conducted below quality standards sooner. When the landlord did later respond to the resident it mishandled the support it could have provided. Its failure to provide the promised support compounded the distress the resident was already experiencing and lengthened the period she remained without a resolution.
  10. The landlord did not set out how it calculated the compensation it awarded for its acknowledged failures and it did not ask for evidence of costs incurred. It also did not specify what portion of the award was to cover costs and what was for the resident’s distress and inconvenience. To establish whether the resident was fairly compensated, this Service asked her if she was able to provide evidence of the costs she incurred. However, given the amount of time that has passed, this information is no longer available.
  11. It is this Service’s expectation, accepted good practice, and stipulated in the landlord’s own policy and procedures that it would liaise with its resident to establish the costs incurred by her to ensure that she was fairly compensated. However, the landlord failed to do so, and then further failed to make it clear to the resident how it had reached the figure it did, leaving her concerned she had not been adequately compensated.
  12. The landlord took some steps after the complaint was logged to redress matters such as providing feedback to its contractors, changing some of those contractors, and making an award of compensation. It has also provided feedback to a named member of staff which it identified as failing to respond to the resident’s concerns sooner. 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.
  13. However, the landlord’s apologies did not adequately reflect that it fully understood the impact of its failures on the resident. Moreover, it has told this Service that it has no vulnerabilities recorded for the resident, despite the evidence demonstrating that it was put on notice of the resident’s vulnerabilities and that she had explicitly set out the impact the situation was having on her as a vulnerable individual.
  14. It is clear, therefore, that the landlord failed to consider the impact of the situation on the resident as a vulnerable individual and did not respond appropriately to her. It is reasonable to conclude then that it also did not take her vulnerabilities sufficiently into account when assessing the compensation award.
  15. The identified failures amount to maladministration and the landlord is therefore ordered to apologise for these failings and pay the resident a further £150, in addition to the £250 previously paid, for the distress and inconvenience caused by its failures, in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance.
  16. This Service encourages landlords to self-assess against the Ombudsman’s Spotlight reports following publication. In March 2019, we published our Spotlight on complaints about repairs. The evidence gathered during this investigation shows the landlord’s practice was not in line with the recommendations made in that report. We encourage the landlord to consider the findings and recommendations of our Spotlight report unless it can provide evidence it has self-assessed already.

The landlord’s handling of the associated complaint

  1. The landlord’s complaint policy applicable at the time of the complaint defines a complaint as ‘an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by the organisation, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents.’
  2. The policy sets out that the landlord would address complaints first under an early resolution, followed by a manager investigation, and then a director investigation. The acknowledgement and response timescales for each stage were the same; acknowledgement and/or discussion of the matter with the resident within 24 hours and a response to be issued within 5 working days. The policy said that at all stages the complaint response would be sent to the resident when the answer to the complaint was known, not when any actions to address the issue were completed.
  3. The landlord’s complaint handling procedure said that it was important to keep in regular contact with residents, even where an update was not available, so that the resident would know they had not been forgotten.
  4. The stage 1 complaint was logged on 31 January 2023, and an acknowledgement email, attaching the ICP and timescales, was sent to the resident on 2 February 2023, 2 working days later. There is no evidence of any attempt to discuss the complaint with her thereafter. She chased the landlord on 19 February 2023 and it informed her the following day that someone should be in touch with her within the next couple of days, but this did not happen.
  5. The resident chased again for a response on 27 February and 9 March 2023, and also contacted the Ombudsman for assistance on the latter date. The landlord ultimately emailed the resident on 10 March 2023 and said it had responded to her complaint in writing on 8 March 2023, and posted this to her ‘as per process’. The landlord’s complaints policy and procedure did not say that its response would only be sent by post. The resident had contacted the landlord by phone and email throughout, so there was no reasonable explanation for why it opted to issue the stage 1 response by letter and did not email her a copy.
  6. The landlord went on to state that the response was delayed because it had wanted to complete outstanding repairs to ensure the resident was completely satisfied. This was contrary to its own policy which said that the complaint response would not be delayed to address or action outstanding issues. The same policy and procedures required the landlord to keep the resident updated while it investigated the complaint, so that she would know she had not been forgotten, but it failed to do so. The resident was not only forced to chase for updates but ignored with no explanations provided when she did.
  7. The stage 1 complaint was made on 31 January 2023 and the stage 1 response was issued on 8 March 2023. The complaint was, therefore, not responded to within the specified timescale of 5 working days. The delay resulted in the resident repeatedly chasing the landlord for an update; the landlord failed to not only update her about the delay, it did not respond to her chasers either. The landlord also failed to contact the resident to discuss the complaint so it could understand why she was unhappy and the resolution she sought. These failures led the resident to think that she and her complaint were being ignored, further adding to her distress.
  8. The resident escalated her complaint to stage 2 on 13 March 2023. She referred the landlord to its ICP response times and the fact it had missed these at stage 1. The landlord issued the first stage 2 response on 21 March 2023; again, outside the 5 working day timeframe set out in its policy. It apologised for the delay saying there had been a lot to ‘unpack’ in the escalation request, but it did not provide an explanation for why the resident was not updated about the delay.
  9. In this response, the landlord said that its ICP timeframes for acknowledgement were 5 working days and it had 10 working days from that date to issue a full response (it apologised for not having met these). This is incorrect as the complaint policy in effect at the time, which was provided to the resident, had the timeframes of 24 hours for an acknowledgement and 5 working days for a complaint response. The landlord failed to meet both the advised timescale and the one it erroneously believed was applicable.
  10. In addition to its failure to adhere to advised complaint timeframes, there has been significant confusion in the landlord following its own ICP and providing inaccurate information to this Service. The landlord told the Ombudsman on 31 January 2024 that it issued a stage 1 ‘early resolution’ response on 8 March 2023, and a stage 2 ‘manager investigation’ response on 10 March 2023. However, it said the resident had not then escalated the complaint to its director level stage 3 so the ICP had not been exhausted.
  11. Given the lack of a discussion with the resident and the time then taken to send her a reply to her complaint, the stage 1 response (as defined above) cannot reasonably be considered to have been issued at the landlord’s early resolution stage, which is intended to be informal and swift. Further, the letter was not labelled as an early resolution response and there is no evidence that the resident was informed of this in some other way.
  12. The stage 1 response told the resident that if she remained dissatisfied then the matter could be reviewed by the head of customer safety and planning maintenance at the next stage. However, when the resident then reverted to express her dissatisfaction, the same individual, a customer safety manager, reviewed her continuing dissatisfaction and issued a response. To be clear, the same customer safety manager issued the responses of 8, 10 and 21 March 2023.
  13. Further, the 10 March 2023 email, which the landlord told this Service was its manager level response, was sent in response to the resident chasing for a reply or an update to her stage 1 complaint. This email was not labelled as a stage 2 manager response, nor did it provide any escalation rights and information. Therefore, even at such a late stage of events the landlord remained unclear on its issued responses and the process it had followed.
  14. Instead, it was the first stage 2 response (as defined above), which advised the resident that if she still remained dissatisfied she had the option to raise the matter with this Service. The letter did not specify what stage of the ICP it was issued at or tell the resident that she should request to escalate the complaint with the landlord for a stage 3 review at director level.
  15. It is, therefore, the first stage 2 response that this Service considers to be the landlord’s final response, irrespective of what stage of its process this was intended to be. It is neither fair nor reasonable for the landlord to claim the resident failed to request an escalation following its offer of £250 compensation when it clearly directed her to this Service as the next step.
  16. Further, the landlord told this Service that the resident had not previously raised the boiler replacement and so it would be treating that as a new issue. However, the first contact the resident made with the landlord in August 2022 and the stage 1 complaint both mentioned the boiler replacement. The detailed stage 2 complaint also set out the issue of the boiler replacement as the root of the issues that had subsequently arisen, and this was addressed in the first stage 2 response.
  17. Therefore, not only had the landlord’s ICP already been completed in March 2023, but no new issues had been raised which required a separate complaint to be logged. The second stage 2 response did go into greater detail and provide additional information than the first stage 2 response, but this was not because the landlord had not already had sufficient opportunity to address the issues raised. Instead, this demonstrates that the landlord had failed to properly address the complaint in the first instance.
  18. When this Service contacted the landlord to progress our investigation in September 2023, and the landlord provided incorrect information, this caused additional delays and exacerbated the previous ICP failings. Altogether, these failings amount to maladministration and the landlord is ordered below to apologise for these and pay the resident £250 for the distress and inconvenience caused, in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance.
  19. On 8 February 2024, the Ombudsman issued the statutory Complaint Handling Code (the Code), which sets out the requirements landlords must meet when handling complaints in both policy and practice. The new Code applies from 1 April 2024 and the Ombudsman has a duty to monitor compliance with it. We will assess landlords using our Compliance Framework and take action where there is evidence that the requirements set out in the Code are not being met. As a result, no specific order is made on this case with regard to the landlord’s compliance with the Code, and the contents of its policies and procedures in that regard.
  20. However, an order is made for the landlord to review its handling of the formal complaint in this case, alongside the provisions of the Code in order to: understand how the failings occurred; identify areas for improvement; and note where current practices may be at odds with the requirements of the Code.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Scheme, there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the:
    1. Heating repairs and boiler replacement.
    2. Associated complaint.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of this report, the landlord is ordered to:
    1. Write to the resident from a senior member of staff, such as its CEO, with an apology (with reference to the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance to ensure the apology is sincere and appropriate) for its:
      1. Failure to respond promptly and appropriately to her concerns about the boiler and heating system.
      2. Complaint handling failures.
    2. Pay directly to the resident (and not offset against any rent arrears) £400 compensation, in addition to the £250 already paid, as follows:
      1. £150 in recognition of the distress and inconvenience caused by the landlord’s handling of the boiler replacement and heating system repairs.
      2. £250 in recognition of the upset and inconvenience caused by the landlord’s poor handling of the associated complaint.
    3. Review the complaint handling failures highlighted in this investigation alongside the provisions of the Code.
    4. Provide evidence of compliance with these orders to the Ombudsman within 4 weeks.