Birmingham City Council (202221809)

REPORT

COMPLAINT 202221809

Birmingham City Council

23 June 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

The complaint is about the landlord’s handling of structural work at the property.
The Ombudsman has also considered the landlord’s:
1. complaint handling.
2. record keeping.

Background

The resident’s tenancy began in October 2017. He was a secure tenant. In October 2020 he formally notified the landlord that he wished to purchase the property under the government’s ‘Right to Buy’ (RTB) scheme. The landlord confirmed he was eligible for the scheme and agreed to sell him the property.
There then followed almost 4 years of dialogue between the resident and the landlord regarding historical underpinning works, further structural works required, and the impact of this on the purchase price of the property. As a result, the resident did not complete his purchase of the property under the RTB scheme until March 2024.
The events that led to the complaint we are investigating began in July 2021 when the landlord told the resident’s solicitor that it underpinned the property to address subsidence in 2006. It then commissioned a survey of the property which identified that further structural work was required. It told the resident in August 2021 that it would complete this work, which it estimated would take 3 months, prior to the resident completing the purchase of the property through the RTB scheme.
On 19 October 2021 a sub-contractor of the landlord’s contractor attended the property and drilled into a floor that was suspected to contain asbestos. The sub-contractor ceased all activity at the property. The landlord carried out asbestos testing the following week. However, it gave the resident no indication as to when the sub-contractor would return to the property and complete the structural work.
In the months that followed the resident asked the landlord to confirm when it would carry out the structural work. He told it that its contractor, who was project managing the work, had advised him the work would not start until 2022. The resident then queried whether he could purchase the property in the condition it was in.
The landlord has not provided us with all correspondence it sent to and received from the resident and his solicitor during 2022. However, it would appear the focus of the correspondence was on whether the landlord should carry out the outstanding works and the impact this may have on the purchase price of the property. The resident advised that the landlord had previously agreed in August 2021 that it would cover the full cost of the structural work. He suggested that it should therefore complete the structural work but not apply the ‘cost floor’ rule to his purchase of the property to account for the costs of the work. The cost floor rule can limit the discount a resident receives when buying a property through the RTB scheme.
By the end of 2022 the sale of the property had not progressed and the structural works remained outstanding. The landlord sent the resident an email on 13 December 2022 to summarise its position. It said:
1. It refuted that it had agreed to cover the work costs in August 2021. Regardless, the process for agreeing the sale price of the property was statutory and “not one that is capable of being subject to bespoke agreement in any individual case”.
2. It had originally valued the property at £100,000. It issued a revised offer notice in April 2022 in which it revalued the property at £70,000 due to the structural issues it had identified. The resident was entitled to a 35% discount so he could buy the property for £45,500. Alternatively he could ask the District Valuer to determine the value of the property.
3. It would not carry out the structural work while the resident’s RTB application remained open.
4. If it did carry out the structural work, the costs incurred would be relevant for calculating the cost floor price of the property. It would not sell the property under the RTB scheme for less than this. It provided the resident with a breakdown of the costs it had previously received from its contractor.
Further to a request from the resident, the landlord instructed the District Valuer on 15 December 2022.
The resident emailed the landlord on 3 January 2023 and asked numerous questions relating to delays in the landlord revaluing the property and providing him with the cost breakdown information. He also suggested again that the cost floor rule should not be applied as the only reason the work was required, was because the landlord had not carried out the underpinning works in 2006 correctly. He asked why he should have to “bear the cost of the [landlord’s] failures”.
The landlord did not respond to the resident’s email. He therefore raised a formal complaint (Complaint 1) on 23 January 2023. He asked it to:
1. Respond to the queries raised in his email of 3 January 2023.
2. Clarify “why the agreement reached in August 2021 to repair any issues found wrong with the underpinning wasn’t carried out”.
The landlord issued its stage 1 response to the complaint on 14 February 2023. It said:
1. It had previously agreed to carry out the structural works and it had intended to have the property revalued once this work was complete.
2. The reason it had not carried the works out was because the resident had told it the work was going to take too long to complete and he would prefer to proceed with the purchase of the property.
In the remainder of the stage 1 response, the landlord summarised communications it had with the resident during 2022 regarding the works, including its email of 13 December 2022 as outlined above. It reiterated that it could only carry out the structural works if the RTB application was withdrawn and that its costs in doing the work would be factored into any future RTB application.
In the months that followed the resident continued to correspond with the landlord about his RTB application, the property valuation, and the structural works. On 19 July 2023, based on the District Valuer’s determination, the landlord issued a revised offer to the resident in which it reduced the sale price from £70,000 to £50,000. Factoring in the resident’s discount, this gave a purchase price of £32,500.
The resident remained unhappy with how the landlord was handling his RTB application and its position in relation to the structural works. He asked us for assistance. We referred a further complaint to the landlord on his behalf on 15 August 2023 (Complaint 2). We told the landlord his complaint was that:
1. It told him in August 2021 it would carry out the structural works and that this would take approximately 3 months to complete.
2. It started the works but they stopped due to asbestos being exposed in the property in October 2021.
3. It had not since resumed the work.
The landlord issued its stage 1 response on 15 September 2023 and said it did not uphold the resident’s complaint. It explained:
1. The sub-contractor attended the property on 19 October 2021 to take samples from the floor for testing before the structural works commenced. This was “by no means the start of the work”. It subsequently identified that asbestos was present in the property and removed it.
2. It advised the resident on “numerous occasions” that he would have to move out of the property while the structural work was ongoing due to health and safety reasons. It said it could put him in alternative accommodation but he “declined to take this option”. It was therefore unable to carry out the structural work while the resident remained at the property.
The resident emailed the landlord on 16 September 2023 and asked for a stage 2 review of his complaint. He set out the reasons for this request within that email and 4 further emails he sent to the landlord over the next month. He said:
1. The sub-contractor attended his property on 19 October 2021 to drill boreholes into the bedroom walls to check if they were load bearing. It had, therefore, started the works. For the landlord to suggest the works had not started and that the sub-contractor was there only to take samples from the floor prior to the works commencing was a “blatant lie”.
2. The contractor told him that the sub-contractor should not have carried out any works in the property on 19 October 2021 as it did not at that time hold valid asbestos certification.
3. He was a qualified demolition contractor trained in asbestos detection and removal. The only reason asbestos was detected was because after the sub-contractor stopped drilling, he raised concern that it had drilled into asbestos. To evidence his version of events, he could provide the landlord with his contemporaneous text exchanges with the contractor along with other correspondence and photographs.
4. The landlord had never removed any asbestos from his property and the site of the incident remained as the landlord had left it in October 2021, with a temporary “make safe” covering the drill hole.
5. The contractor told him shortly after the asbestos incident that it would not be carrying out the structural work until 2022. Despite him and 2 elected representatives asking the landlord numerous times why this was, it had failed to give him a “straight answer” and kept coming up with “different excuses”. He wondered if it was because the contractor knew at that time that the landlord was not going to renew its contract in 2022.
6. Despite all the reasons given by the landlord as to why it had not carried out the work, at no stage prior to the recent stage 1 response had it suggested it was because the resident refused a decant. He never refused to move out of the property. He told the landlord he did not require it to arrange alternative accommodation as he would stay with a family member while the work was ongoing.
7. At no time did the landlord formally offer him any alternative accommodation. He asked it to provide proof to support its position in the stage 1 response that he refused to move out.
8. He felt there had been a “cover up” surrounding the asbestos incident and the landlord’s failure to carry out the structural works.
Meanwhile, on 7 October 2023 an elected representative emailed the landlord and expressed “surprise” that it said it did not carry out the structural work as the resident declined to move into alternative accommodation. He said, “This is not the case. At no point was alternative accommodation offered or refused.”
The landlord responded to the elected representative on 17 October 2023 and copied the resident into the reply. It set out a timeline of events relating to the resident’s RTB application. It said that in October 2021 it discussed with him the need for a decant and that it then offered him suitable alternative accommodation. It included the address of the alternative accommodation in the email to the elected representative and said the resident refused the offer. It also suggesting that he told a contractor he wanted to be put in a hotel and that he was concerned if he moved out the work would take longer to complete.
The resident responded to the landlord on the same day, 17 October 2023. He said the landlord mentioned the address of the alternative accommodation to him but never formally offered it to him as he told it that he would be moving in with family. He detailed the names of officers with whom he had discussed and agreed this. As supporting evidence, he provided an email from one of the officers in which she sent him a compensation form so he could claim costs while moved out. He said that he did not tell the contractor he wanted to be put in a hotel. It was that the contractor said he knew of other residents who the landlord moved into a hotel for similar works. The resident said he simply commented that the landlord had not given him that option.
The resident also explained in the email that the only reason he asked to purchase the property in its current condition was “out of pure frustration after being ignored”. He said the contractor “basically abandoned the project”. He outlined various correspondence he had received from different officers over the previous 2 years in which they provided different reasons for why the landlord had not carried out the work.
The landlord issued its stage 2 response on 2 November 2023. The response included the timeline provided to the elected representative and resident on 17 October 2023. The landlord said while it noted the resident disagreed with the account it provided, there was no purpose served in “iterating and reiterating the history of the correspondence” between them.
In the remainder of the stage 2 response the landlord addressed the outstanding structural works. It said that:
1. The independent, statutory determination of value issued by the District Valuer reflected the ongoing structural issues.
2. It would not carry out the structural works while the RTB application remained open as “this would be inconsistent with the statutory procedures under the Housing Act 1985 which determine values and the selling price”.
3. If the resident wanted the landlord to carry out the structural works, it would mean that once the works were complete, the property would be further valued and a revised purchase price applied.
The resident remained unhappy with the landlord’s response to his complaint. He referred it to the Ombudsman on 7 November 2023.
In March 2024 the resident purchased the property through the RTB scheme. The landlord did not carry out the works prior to completion. We understand that instead the property was sold to the resident based on the value of the land only. The value was assessed by the District Valuer.
Following this the resident confirmed he still wished us to investigate his complaint. He told us he wanted the landlord to compensate him for the rent he paid from October 2021 onwards, as well as for the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of his RTB application.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

The RTB scheme has built-in processes that enabled the resident to:
1. Ask for the District Valuer to value the property.
2. Take action against the landlord if he believed it was unreasonably delaying in progressing his application. This included through the service of an ‘operative notice of delay’ form through which he could have submitted a claim for a rent rebate during any period of delay. He could also have applied to the County Court for an injunction to enforce the landlord to comply with its duties under the RTB scheme.
Given this, the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about the valuation of the property and the proposed application of the cost floor rule fall outside the scope of our investigation.
Similarly, we are unable to order the landlord to offer him a rent rebate given there was a process contained within the RTB scheme through which he could have made such a claim. We are unable to say whether such a claim would have been successful. If the resident wishes to consider whether a claim for a rent rebate is an option still open to him, he should seek independent legal advice.

The landlord’s handling of structural work at the property

The landlord is required by section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to keep the structure and exterior of the property in repair. That a RTB application had been submitted by the resident did not absolve it of this legal obligation which remained ongoing up to the point the property was sold. However, it qualified its obligations within its repairs policy which stated, “Major repairs, renewals and improvements shall not normally be carried out to a property whilst a right to buy application is being processed. Responsive repairs shall continue to be carried out during the period up to purchase date.”
We are satisfied that this policy position was reasonable. This is because major works are a significant investment and can often take much longer to complete than a sale of a property usually would. Given the RTB scheme contains timeframes, it is reasonable that the landlord would require an application to be put on hold or withdrawn while it completed works and revalued the property. It was entitled under the RTB scheme to apply a cost floor rule once the work was complete.
We have seen no evidence that the landlord refused to carry out the structural works required to the resident’s property. It did, however, qualify the circumstances under which it would carry out the work. As outlined in its email of 13 December 2022, it gave the resident 2 options:
1. It would carry out the works but not while the resident’s RTB application remained open. This was because it would have to revalue the property once the work was completed and apply the cost floor rule which may have resulted in the resident paying a higher purchase price.
2. It would not carry out the works and the resident could proceed with buying the property. It said its valuation took account of the “defects identified” but that he also had the option of asking the District Valuer to assess the value.
This was a reasonable position that was in line with its repairs policy. The landlord said in a later complaint response that it also set out that position, offering the resident the 2 options, in earlier correspondence in May 2022 and June 2022. We have not seen that earlier correspondence but we are satisfied that by December 2022 it had clearly communicated its reasonable position on the structural works to the resident. However, while that communication was reasonable, we have found a number of other communication failings in this case.
The landlord failed at the outset to clarify its position in relation to the structural work. It told the resident in August 2021 it would carry out the work required in order to be in a position to provide him with certification that the property was structurally sound. We have seen no evidence it told him it would fully cover the cost of the work and not try and reclaim this through the sale. However, we equally have seen no evidence that it explained to him that it would revalue the property and apply the cost floor rule once the work was complete. It therefore failed to manage his expectations.
The landlord provided the resident with a number of different reasons as to why it did not carry out the work despite its agreement in August 2021 to do so. Its contractor initially told the resident in November 2021 that the work had been deferred to 2022. We have seen email evidence that an elected representative queried why this was with the contractor at the time, but it does not appear to have replied.
The landlord then suggested in correspondence with the resident during 2022 that the reason it did not progress the work was because he had asked to buy the property in the condition it was in. It restated this as the reason the works did not progress in its stage 1 response to Complaint 1 in February 2023. However, as the resident explained to the landlord on a number of occasions, he only asked it this after weeks of asking why the work had been delayed and receiving no response. He had not committed to buying the property in its current position, rather he wanted the landlord to clarify if it was an option and what the costs involved would be. This therefore did not account for the landlord’s apparent shift in position regarding completion of the works in October 2021.
In emails from June 2022 onwards, the landlord’s legal team explained to the resident that it would not carry out the work while the RTB application remained open. As we have outlined above, this was a reasonable position for it to adopt and it explained this in both its responses to Complaint 2. However, it represented a shift in the position it communicated to the resident in August 2021, which was that it was going to carry out the work. It failed to acknowledge this in its complaint responses.
An additional reason given by the landlord in both its responses to Complaint 2 for not carrying out the works, was that the resident refused a decant. This was strongly refuted by the resident in his escalation request and a number of follow up emails he sent to the landlord prior to it issuing its stage 2 response. He provided evidence that he told it he would move in with family. He asked it to provide him with evidence it offered him alternative accommodation and that he refused it. He disputed its account of the conversation he had with the contractor regarding hotel accommodation.
The landlord unreasonably refused to engage with this aspect of the resident’s escalation request and simply restated in its stage 2 response its view that he had refused a decant. It did not acknowledge his evidence to the contrary and provided him with no further information in support of its position. It similarly has provided us with no evidence he refused a decant. If he had done so, we would have expected the landlord to have told him at the time of the consequence of this and for it to have a contemporary record of this. That it did not means the evidence supports the resident’s version of events.
Overall, we find there was maladministration in the landlord’s handling of the structural work at the property. This is due to its poor communications with the resident during late 2021 and early 2022. It failed to manage his expectations around the circumstances in which it would carry out the work and the impact this could have on the purchase price of the property. This caused him distress and he spent unnecessary time and trouble contacting the landlord for more information and involving elected representatives to advocate for him. Given this, and in line with our remedies guidance, we order the landlord to pay the resident £300 compensation for the maladministration.
We have also found there was service failure in the landlord’s record keeping. It either had limited contemporary records from 2021 and 2022 that detailed conversations and emails with the resident, or it failed to provide us with them. Either way, this is a record keeping failure. If it has not already done so, we recommend that the landlord carries out a self-assessment against the recommendations made in our Spotlight report on Knowledge and Information Management.

Complaint handling

When the resident submitted his complaints to the landlord in 2023, its complaints policy required it to respond to stage 1 complaints within 15 working days and stage 2 complaints within 20 working days. It has since amended its policy to clarify it will acknowledge stage 1 complaints within 5 working days. If it is unable to informally resolve the complaint, it will respond within 10 working days of the acknowledgement at stage 1 and 20 working days at stage 2. This is in line with the Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code (the Code).
The landlord took 16 working days to issue its stage 1 response to Complaint 1. While this was a failure to respond within the 15 working days set out in its policy at that time, it was only by one day and there is no evidence to suggest that the resident was inconvenienced as a result.
When processing Complaint 2, the landlord’s response was delayed at both stages. It was due to issue its stage 1 response by 6 September 2023 but did not issue it until 15 September 2023. The Code permitted it to extend the timeframe for a response by up to 10 working days provided it advised the resident in advance of this, which it did. The delay was therefore not a complaint handling failure.
The landlord was due to issue its stage 2 response to Complaint 2 on 16 October 2023 but did not issue it for a further 12 working days until 2 November 2023. While it advised the resident that the response would be delayed, it did not do so until after the original response date had passed and we had intervened. It therefore failed to comply with its policy and the Code with regard to timeframes and extensions.
The resident raised the same issues in Complaint 1 and Complaint 2 about the landlord’s handling of the structural work. It initially indicated to him that it would process Complaint 2 as a stage 2 complaint, but then advised him that it had registered it as a stage 1 complaint. The resident was not happy about this as he felt it delayed him in bringing his complaint to the Ombudsman.
We do not find it a failing necessarily that the landlord reconsidered the same complaint at stage 1. However, that it did not explain to the resident why it did so was a failing in its complaint handling. For example, it could have explained that when the resident received his stage 1 response to Complaint 1, there was a limited amount of time within which he could request a stage 2 review. Its complaints policy at that time did not clearly explain this nor did its stage 1 response to Complaint 1. However, we note that its updated complaints policy states that it will usually require residents to make an escalation request within 2 months of receiving the stage 1 response.
The Code requires landlord to acknowledge their mistakes. As we have outlined above, the landlord’s communications with the resident in late 2021 and early 2022 were poor. It did not acknowledge or apologise for this in its complaint responses.
The Code also requires landlords to respond to all aspects of a complaint. This includes any issues raised by the resident in their escalation request that relate to the original complaint. As we have outlined above, the landlord failed to respond to the resident’s detailed comments explaining that he had not refused a decant.
Similarly, the landlord did not respond in any detail to the issues raised by the resident in his escalation correspondence about the asbestos incident. He outlined a number of concerns to which the landlord should reasonably have responded. For example, he said the sub-contractor did not have the required asbestos certification when it attended his property on 19 October 2021. He raised concerns about the landlord’s subsequent investigation into the incident, including that it took 6 days after the incident before it carried out any testing in his property. He said it had not removed any asbestos from his property as it suggested in the stage 1 response. He indicated he was willing to speak to the landlord in more detail about this and could provide evidence to support his version of events such as text messages, correspondence and photographs. It was unreasonable that the landlord did not investigate these concerns or, if it did investigate, it did not advise the resident of its findings within the stage 2 response. This was a failure to engage with the complaint in a meaningful way.
If the landlord considered that it could not investigate this matter owing to the passage of time, it should reasonably have said so. That no response was provided to the resident’s concerns in the stage 2 response was inappropriate.
We are aware the resident subsequently asked the landlord during 2024 to investigate his complaint about the asbestos incident. He told it he had additional evidence received through an information request that supported his version of events. The landlord refused to respond to the complaint on the basis it had already addressed this through its previous complaint responses. However, as we have explained, it failed in its previous responses in 2023 to address all of the resident’s concerns about the incident. We have therefore ordered it to respond to the resident’s complaint about asbestos. Despite the passage of time, if it carried out a thorough post-incident investigation into the incident at the time, we would expect it to still retain notes and other records that would enable it to conduct a complaint investigation.
Overall we have found there was maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling. This was due to delays in issuing its complaint responses as well as limitations in the substance of its responses to all of the concerns raised by the resident. This maladministration has caused the resident to spend unnecessary time and trouble in pursuing a further complaint about asbestos. Given this, and in line with our remedies guidance, we order the landlord to pay him £200 compensation.

Determination

In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was:
1. Maladministration in the landlord’s handling of structural work at the property.
2. Maladministration in the landlord’s complaint handling.
3. Service failure in the landlord’s record keeping.

Orders

Within 4 weeks of the date of this report, the landlord should:
1. Apologise to the resident for the failures identified in this report. The apology should follow the best practice set out in the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance.
2. Pay the resident £500 compensation broken down as follows:
  1. £300 for distress and inconvenience, time and trouble, due to the maladministration in its handling of structural work at the property.
  2. £200 for time and trouble due to the maladministration in its complaint handling.
3. Contact the resident and ask him if he still wishes to complain about the asbestos incident in October 2021. If he does, it should ask him to outline his concerns. It should then investigate and respond to the complaint at stage 1 in line with its complaints policy.

Recommendations

We recommend that the landlord carries out a self-assessment against the recommendations made in our Spotlight report on Knowledge and Information Management.