Aster Group Limited (202320973)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202320973

Aster Group Limited

13 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 response to the resident’s reports of antisocial behaviour (ASB).
2. The Ombudsman has also investigated the landlord’s handling of the complaint.

Background

3. At the time of the complaint, the resident was the tenant of the landlord. He held an assured tenancy agreement which started on 6 September 2021. His property was a first floor flat. The resident was aware that his neighbour below him had vulnerabilities.
4. On 7 January 2022, the resident reported that the neighbour below him “rants” for up to 5 hours at a time. The landlord spoke to him on 19 January 2022, when he said that:
   1. The neighbour regularly shouted, screamed, swore loudly, and made threats to kill.
   2. The neighbour played loud music at all times of the day.
   3. There was a smell of drugs from the neighbour’s property.
   4. The neighbour frequently had visitors.
   5. There was “crashing of furniture”.
   6. The disturbances were affecting his mental health.
5. The landlord opened an ASB case on 19 January 2022 which it closed on 20 October 2022. During this time:
   1. The resident provided diary sheets of the noise incidents.
   2. The landlord mentioned referring the matter to the council’s environmental health team for noise monitoring.
   3. It provided him with a Dictaphone to record the noise.
   4. The resident became frustrated with the lack of progress in resolving the ongoing ASB.
   5. On 16 June 2022 the resident said he no longer wanted to deal with the landlord’s ASB officer.
   6. The landlord stopped communicating with the resident about the ASB and monitored the case until 20 October 2022.
6. The landlord re-opened the ASB case on 27 March 2023 when the resident reported the ASB continued. He raised a stage 1 complaint with the landlord on 22 June 2023. The resident said the landlord’s ASB officer did not respond to his contact, and when they did, they were untruthful. He wanted the ASB from the neighbour to be resolved with police or mental health intervention.
7. The landlord issued its stage 1 complaint response on 31 July 2023. It said that it had maintained regular contact by email and telephone with the resident throughout the ASB case. The landlord said that there were situations where it was reliant on third parties, such as the police or community mental health teams to lead the investigation. It said it had appropriately worked with other agencies to deal with the reported ASB. The landlord explained that the other agencies and itself needed to demonstrate they had taken all possible non-legal interventions to resolve the ASB. It noted that the resident had disengaged from reporting ASB and urged him to continue to report and provide evidence.
8. The resident escalated his complaint on 3 August 2023. He disputed that he disengaged with the ASB reporting process and was unhappy that there had been no progress in resolving the ASB. The resident said the landlord did not understand the impact on him of the ASB. He reported that the neighbour had a guest living with them who caused ASB which he said was a breach of tenancy. He added that the ASB from the neighbour and their guest affected other neighbours and had forced the previous occupant of his property to move out.
9. The landlord issued its final response to the complaint on 11 August 2023. It said it could not comment on ‘hearsay’ evidence. It repeated that it had maintained regular contact with the resident and urged him to continue reporting the ASB. The landlord said its powers were limited and resolving the ASB was dependent on the neighbour. It said the ASB continuing was not evidence of a failure on its part.
10. The resident’s tenancy with the landlord ended on 17 March 2024.
11. The resident confirmed to the Ombudsman on 28 August 2024 that he remained unhappy with the landlord’s handling of his reports of ASB. The resident’s desired resolutions were for the landlord to:
    1. Resolve the ASB.
    2. Significantly improve the way it investigated ASB.
    3. Significantly improve the way it communicated with residents who report ASB.

Scope of investigation

12. Paragraph 42(a) of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme states that the Ombudsman may not investigate complaints which have not yet exhausted the landlord’s complaints procedure. We are therefore unable to consider events that occurred after the landlord’s final response to the complaint as it has not had a chance to respond to any dissatisfaction by the resident about these. The resident may wish to raise a new complaint about any further dissatisfaction to the landlord. If he continues to be unhappy after its final response, the Ombudsman may be able to consider his new complaint at that stage.

Assessment and findings

13. It is not the Ombudsman’s role to determine whether ASB took place. Rather, we will review the landlord’s actions in response to the resident’s reports of ASB. We will assess whether the landlord acted reasonably in the circumstances and in line with its legal obligations, its relevant policies and procedures, and industry best practice.

Policies and procedures

14. The landlord’s ASB procedure defines ASB as “Engaging in or threatening to engage in conduct causing or likely to cause a nuisance or annoyance to persons engaged in lawful activities”. The procedure says that as soon as it receives a report of ASB, it should immediately:
    1. Triage the report.
    2. Complete an impact assessment.
    3. Open an ASB case for high priority cases.
    4. Agree an action plan with the resident.
    5. Notify the relevant member of staff.
15. The landlord’s ASB procedure sets out that it will carry out an impact assessment with “each new complainant in a case” and that it should review the assessment every 3 months or after any new significant development. 
16. The procedure also states that, on opening an ASB case, the landlord should then agree an action plan with the resident and assign an ASB officer who should speak to them within 48 hours. At this point, the landlord should agree what it will do to investigate the reported ASB. Unless agreed otherwise, the ASB officer should then maintain 2-weekly contact with the resident during the investigation.
17. The landlord’s ASB procedure also says that it should consider, on a case-by-case basis, whether a multi-agency approach is needed. It should also cooperate with other agencies to manage the ASB case. The landlord should also identify whether there are “risks or support needs” in either party and make referrals to partner agencies for support. 
18. The landlord’s complaints procedure states that it should acknowledge complaints within 5 working days of receipt. The procedure sets out 2 stages of complaint.  At stage 1 it should respond to the resident within 10 working days of logging the complaint. At the final stage it should respond within 20 working days of the resident’s escalation request. If the landlord is unable to meet these timeframes, the procedure states that it should provide a new deadline to the resident which should not be more than another 10 working days.

The landlord’s response to the resident’s reports of ASB

19. The ASB reported by the resident on 7 January 2022 met the definition of ASB in the landlord’s procedure. It was appropriate that the landlord opened an ASB case in response. However, there were delays by the landlord in its approach to the ASB case. It did not complete an impact assessment, open an ASB case, or agree an action plan with the resident immediately. The landlord also did not speak to the resident within 48 hours. There was a delay of 8 working days from 7 January 2022 before it completed these actions on 19 January 2022.
20. These initial delays were a failure by the landlord to follow the timeframes in its ASB procedure. It is vital for landlords to start investigating reports of ASB promptly to maximise its chances of resolving the issues before they escalate. However, the overall delay was not excessive.
21. The landlord acted reasonably in the circumstances to resolve the reported ASB. The Ombudsman has seen evidence that it discussed the neighbour’s behaviour with outside agencies and support networks. The evidence showed that it contacted these agencies in response to the resident’s reports of ASB and followed up on a regular basis. The landlord continued to work with these agencies after the resident had stopped contacting the landlord about the reported ASB, between June and October 2022.
22. The evidence also showed that the landlord contacted the neighbour on the occasions when they did not engage with the outside agencies. On these occasions it appropriately highlighted the potential effect on their tenancy of continued ASB.
23. A landlord would be expected to exhaust all reasonable informal interventions before taking formal tenancy action against a tenant for ASB. As a provider of social housing, the landlord had a duty to make reasonable efforts to help the neighbour to sustain their tenancy. It was reasonable then that, in its updates to the resident, it relayed that it had been passing his reports of ASB to external agencies, which were best placed to address the neighbour’s behaviour.
24. There were failures by the landlord in its approach to gathering evidence of the reported ASB. It said, on 24 January, and 11 and 24 February 2022, it would contact the council’s environmental health department to arrange for noise recording equipment. This would have been a reasonable way for the landlord to gather evidence since the resident said he could not use the noise app to make recordings. However, there was no evidence that it updated him on this.
25. The landlord provided the resident with a Dictaphone on 7 April 2022 to record the noise from his neighbour. This was 2 months after it last said it would look into noise recording by the council. While it was reasonable to offer the Dictaphone to the resident, this was not timely. In the preceding 2 months, the resident continued to experience and report ASB. This contributed to the distress and frustration experienced by the resident. Furthermore, on receipt of the Dictaphone recordings, there was no evidence of the landlord feeding back its findings to him.
26. A landlord is prevented, for reasons of data protection and confidentiality, from revealing details of one tenant’s circumstances to another. This is especially the case when there may be sensitive information involved. It was appropriate for the landlord not to reveal sensitive information about the resident’s neighbour and the specific agencies it was working with. However, it could have done more to reassure him that it was actively working to deal with the reported ASB. The landlord could have said more about its approach and the limits of its power to manage the resident’s expectations at an early stage.
27. Once it opened the ASB case, the landlord maintained regular contact with the resident until 20 June 2022. This was broadly in line with the two-weekly requirement set out in its procedure. However, most of the landlord’s responses to the resident (outside of its complaints responses) were brief and lacked empathy. Most said that it had passed the details of the resident’s ASB reports to the appropriate agencies without further detail. This caused frustration for the resident and did not convey that the landlord was taking his reports seriously. This was apparent from his emails which said he felt the landlord had not engaged with the matter and had no intention to.
28. When the resident restarted making reports of ASB on 27 March 2023, there was no evidence of the landlord maintaining contact with him or attempting to agree an update schedule. This was a failure to follow its ASB procedure. While the resident said on 16 June 2022 that he no longer wanted to correspond with the ASB officer, it was unreasonable that the landlord did not try to establish regular contact with him on re-opening the case. Regular contact may have provided an opportunity for the landlord to reassure the resident it was taking his reports seriously.
29. The landlord also had a responsibility to the resident to consider his circumstances. It carried out an initial impact assessment when opening the ASB case, however it did not review this. In accordance with its ASB procedure above, the landlord should have carried out a new impact assessment every 3 months or when a significant event occurred. The landlord noted, on 14 March 2022 that the resident was “clearly very stressed” and said he would “take matters into his own hands”. It would have been reasonable for it to recognise the resident’s increasing levels of distress as a reason to re-assess the impact on the resident. It did not do so, and it failed to identify any “risks or support needs” as set out in its procedure. 
30. To recognise the distress and inconvenience experienced by the resident resulting from the landlord’s handling of the reported ASB, it should pay him £250 compensation. This is in line with our remedies guidance which is available to view on our website. This provides for awards of compensation between £100 and £600 where there have failings which had an adverse effect on a resident, but which may not have been permanent.
31. The landlord must also write to the resident to apologise for the failings identified. This apology must come from a senior member of staff and should acknowledge the failings identified. The landlord should also set out how it will improve its communication with residents in similar cases going forward.

The landlord’s handling of the complaint

32. The resident made his complaint to the landlord on 22 June 2023. It acknowledged this after 6 working days, on 30 June 2023, stating that it would provide its stage 1 response by 14 July 2023. It was evident that the landlord told the resident that it would extend the time limit, by 10 working days, to 28 July 2023. 
33. The landlord did not issue its stage 1 response on 28 July 2023. It acknowledged, on 28 July 2023, that its stage 1 response was overdue. It told the resident it would compensate him for the delay and its internal emails showed it would offer him £75. However, the landlord’s stage 1 response did not mention the delay, nor offer compensation, and there was no evidence it paid him the £75. The landlord failed to do what it said it would.
34. The Ombudsman’s dispute resolution principles are: be fair, put it right, and learn from outcomes. It was unfair that the landlord did not acknowledge its delay in its stage 1 complaint response or that it had offered to pay compensation. It should have recognised this failing and ‘put it right’ by paying the compensation that it said it would. It should also have acknowledged the delay to help it to learn from outcomes and prevent delays in the future.
35. The landlord’s complaint handling failure amounts to service failure and it must pay £75 compensation to the resident. This is in accordance with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance which is available to view on our website. This provides for awards of between £50 and £100 for minor failures which did not significantly affect the overall outcome for the resident.  

Determination

36. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was:
    1. Maladministration by the landlord in its response to the resident’s reports of ASB.
    2. Service failure by the landlord in its handling of the complaint.  

Orders and recommendations

Orders

37. Within 4 weeks the landlord must provide evidence to the Ombudsman that it has complied with the following orders:
    1. Write to the resident to apologise for the failings in the handling of ASB identified in this report. This apology must come from a senior manager and comply with the apologies guidance on the Ombudsman’s website. This letter should also set out how it will improve its communication with residents in similar cases in future.
    2. Pay the resident compensation of £325. This is made up of:
       1. £250 for the resident’s distress and inconvenience experienced as a result of the landlord’s handling of ASB.
       2. £75 for the distress and inconvenience caused by the landlord’s handling of the complaint, unless the landlord can evidence that it already paid this.