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Hammersmith and Fulham Council (202317776)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202317776

Hammersmith and Fulham Council

26 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 fencing repairs.

Background and summary of events

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord. The tenancy began in 1994. The property is a 4-bedroom house with a garden to the front. The landlord employs a contractor to complete repairs to its properties.
  2. The resident reported damage to the fence and gate at the front of the property on 21 February 2023. For the purposes of this report the term “fencing” refers collectively to the fence and gate. The landlord’s contractor visited the property and recommended that new fencing was required. The landlord scheduled the works as a routine repair for 25 and 26 April 2023.
  3. The resident complained on 17 April 2023 that the landlord had not provided information about the boundary line to allow her to arrange for removal of the existing hedge.
  4. The contractor did not install the new fencing due to concerns about the boundary. The landlord rescheduled the works for 1 May 2023 without realising that date was a bank holiday.
  5. The landlord provided its stage 1 complaint response on 16 May 2023 and told the resident that:
    1. It apologised that the contractor did not attend to erect new fencing and for the administrative error in rescheduling the fencing work for a bank holiday.
    2. The contractor would install new fencing on 9 June 2023.
    3. It had decided to pay the resident £375 in compensation for the issues highlighted in its response.
  6. The resident asked that the landlord escalate her complaint to stage 2 on 9 June 2023. She was unhappy that the contractor had attended her property without details of the work that it was to complete.
  7. Between June and July 2023, a sub-contractor on behalf of the landlord’s contractor installed new fencing. The resident was unhappy with the quality of the job. The contractor inspected the works and agreed that the fencing works had been completed to a poor standard.
  8. The landlord provided its stage 2 complaint response on 11 July 2023 and told the resident that:
    1. There had been poor communication and failures to complete the works to a satisfactory level.
    2. It had raised a new repairs job to replace the fencing with its contractor to complete the repair.
    3. It had decided to pay the resident £1,400 in compensation (not mentioned was that figure included the £375 already paid at stage 1).
    4. The compensation amount included £50 for the delays in responding to the residents stage 1 and 2 complaints. It also included compensation for issues during repairs to the resident’s bathroom. The landlord did not provide a full breakdown of how it had apportioned the compensation between the fencing and bathroom repairs.
  9. The resident contacted the Ombudsman on 25 September 2023 unhappy that the landlord had not completed the agreed resolutions from the stage 2 response. The contractor had only partially completed the works at that time. She said that she was concerned that the landlord’s contractor was acting negatively towards her due to her complaints.
  10. The landlord took the responsibility for completing the fencing works away from its contractor on 25 October 2023. The resident confirmed to the landlord on 16 November 2023 that another contractor had completed the fencing works.

Assessment and findings

Scoping

  1. The landlord’s internal complaint procedure investigated and responded to several issues. However, the resident has subsequently confirmed to this Service that they only consider the issue defined above to be outstanding and that the other issues of the complaint have been resolved. Accordingly, this investigation has focussed on and assessed the circumstances of the 1 issue that remains outstanding.

Repairs to fencing

  1. Where a landlord admits failings, the Ombudsman’s role is to assess whether the redress offered by the landlord put things right and resolved the resident’s complaint satisfactorily in the circumstances. The Ombudsman also considers whether the landlord acted in line with our Dispute Resolution Principles: be fair, put things right and learn from outcomes.
  2. The tenancy agreement says that the landlord is responsible for keeping the structure and the exterior of the property in repair.
  3. The landlord’s repairs policy says that it should complete repairs to a good standard in a reasonable time. It should complete routine repairs within 20 working days.
  4. The resident first reported issues with her fencing on 21 February 2023. The landlord arranged for a contractor to inspect the repair on 13 March 2023, this was within its 20 working day timescale of routine repairs. Following the inspection and recommendation to renew the fence, the repair was scheduled to take place on 25 and 26 April 2023. The landlord’s response to the initial fence repair was appropriate.
  5. In the resident’s stage 1 complaint she said the contractor had told her the hedging needed to be removed before it could begin the works. She said she had asked the landlord to find out the boundary lines of the property and was frustrated that no one was able to help her. It provided the information of the boundary line on 27 April 2023, 2 days after the contractor was due to install the fencing which caused further delay to the resident. As the contractor could not complete the original job the landlord had raised a new job to install the fencing on 1 May 2023. This was an administrative error because that date was a bank holiday. The landlord did not identify that error until its stage 1 response. That caused further delay because the next available date its contractor could complete the works was 9 June 2023.
  6. The contractor attended the property on 9 June 2023 but did not complete the fencing works as the operative did not have details of the job. A sub-contractor completed the fencing works on 26 June 2023. The resident e-mailed the landlord the same day and told it that the fence was mismatched, had holes in it, and the gate was not straight. She said she felt stressed, let down, and that the sub-contractor had been unprofessional. There is no record that the landlord acted on the resident’s concerns which was not appropriate. According to the resident’s comments it was the contractor themselves who inspected the works. As the resident’s relationship is with the landlord not its contractors it would have been appropriate for the landlord to have arranged an inspection.
  7. The resident e-mailed the landlord on 7 July 2023 and said that a senior manager from the contractor had inspected the new fencing. She said it had agreed to remove and replace the fencing because of the poor-quality work that its sub-contractor had completed. She said the contractor had scheduled replacement fencing works for 20 July 2023.
  8. The landlord confirmed the date for the replacement fencing works in its stage 2 response on 11 July 2023. It apologised for the quality of the fencing work and assured the resident the contractor would complete the works, not it’s sub-contractor.
  9. The contractor partially completed the fencing works on 20 and 21 July 2023. Given the resident’s previous concerns about the repairs it was reasonable that the landlord inspected the work on 3 August 2023 and it confirmed further work was needed. At that time there was no gate installed. It scheduled a new date of 12 August 2023 for its contractor to complete the works. Given the earlier issues the resident had faced with its contractor the landlord missed an opportunity to review its position at this time. It could have considered employing a different contractor to complete the works, as it did later.
  10. The contractor did not attend on 12 August 2023 because it could not obtain a suitable gate and needed to order one. The contractor left a note on the repair log for the landlord to inform the resident. There is no evidence the landlord informed the resident in advance that the contractor would not be attending. This added further inconvenience to the resident.
  11. The resident told the landlord on 2 September 2023 that the police had to remove “a drunk passerby” from her garden. She was concerned the lack of a gate was a security risk. The landlord replied on 5 September 2023 and told her that it was meeting the contractor that day. It said it was hoping to confirm the date for the fencing works at that meeting.
  12. The resident chased up the outstanding fencing works with the landlord several times throughout September. The landlord did not provide an update until 26 September 2023. It told her that its contractor had given the works to another (different) sub-contractor but still did not have a date. That update was contrary to the assurance provided in its stage 2 response that the landlord’s contractor would complete the works itself. This could have served to undermine the landlord tenant relationship.
  13. The landlord updated the resident on 3 October 2023 and told her it had recalled the works order to give the contractor “a bit of a kick to get the work done”. The landlord responded to another chaser e-mail from the resident on 12 October 2023 and apologised for how long the fencing was taking to resolve. It said it had no reasonable explanation as to why it was still having the same conversation with her. It said the sub-contractor should contact her to arrange a suitable date to complete the work.
  14. The resident e-mailed the landlord on 23 October 2023 and told them that a sub-contractor had measured up the gate on 12 October 2023. She said the sub-contractor told her someone would be in touch to schedule the works, but she had not heard anything since. The resident said she had lost faith in the landlord’s primary contractor. Following that e-mail the landlord decided to remove the fencing works from its primary contractor.  It assigned the work to a different contractor on 25 October 2023, over 3 months since the assurances provided in its complaint response.
  15. The resident confirmed to the landlord on 16 November 2023 that the sub-contractor had completed the fencing works. While the exact date of completion was not provided to the Ombudsman it is reasonable to expect it was completed around 4 months after the landlord’s stage 2 response. This means that, following that complaint response the landlord did not put things right within the 20 working day timeframe in its repairs policy.
  16. The landlord is responsible for managing its relationship with contractors. That responsibility also extends to any sub-contractors its contractors employ. It should ensure that its contractors complete works promptly per its own policies and that contractors act professionally. As highlighted in this report there have been instances where the landlord’s contractor and its sub-contractor have not met those standards.
  17. While the landlord apologised for its failings and offered redress, it did not complete the repairs in the timeframe set out by its repairs policy after it issued its final complaint response. In its 3 October 2023 e-mail to the resident the landlord showed it was aware of difficulties in arranging the works with its contractor. Despite those concerns it took a further 3 weeks for it to reallocate the works to a different contractor. This raises questions about whether it learnt from the complaint, as we expect it to under the dispute resolution principles.
  18. As the landlord did not fully resolve the resident’s request to carry out fencing works in the timeframe set out in its final complaint response, the Ombudsman cannot say that the landlord adequately addressed the issue. It raised the resident’s expectations with the dates given in that response. It did not monitor the fencing works to completion sufficiently with its contractors and that led to a delay. This amounts to maladministration.
  19. When deciding on an appropriate remedy, this Service’s remedies guidance had been considered and because of the landlord’s delay in completing the fencing repairs and failure to effectively manage its contractors, an additional amount of £300 has been decided as appropriate to acknowledge the distress and inconvenience caused. This amount falls within the maladministration banding of this Service’s remedies guidance.
  20. In February 2024, the Ombudsman issued a special report about the landlord, highlighting concerns with its handling of complaints and repairs. The report recommended the landlord review its process, practices and procedures to reduce the risk of similar failures in the future. In this investigation we have identified failures similar to those in our special report. To avoid duplication no further orders or recommendations for policy, process or practice review have been made. We do expect the landlord to take all relevant learning points from this case into account when delivering future service provision

Determination (decision)

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme there was maladministration in the landlord’s response to the resident’s request to carry out fencing works.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of the date of this determination the landlord is ordered to:
    1. Provide an apology to the resident for its delay in completing the fencing works.
    2. Pay the resident an additional £300 compensation recognising the distress and inconvenience caused to her by its delay in completing the fencing works.
  2. The landlord must provide evidence of compliance with the above order to this Service within 4 weeks of this report’s date.

Recommendations

  1. The landlord should contact the resident within 4 weeks of this report’s date and discuss her concerns about its contractor. It should then write to her to tell her how it will address those concerns.