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Home Group Limited (202211705)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202211705

Home Group Limited

4 February 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 requests for repair to a communal door on his floor.
  2. The Ombudsman has also investigated the landlord’s complaint handling.

Background

  1. The resident has been a leaseholder of the landlord, a housing association, since 2018. The property is a 2-bedroom, 1st floor flat. The resident’s wife and child reside with him.
  2. Between 4 February and 27 July 2022, the resident reported to the landlord a faulty communal door on his floor. The landlord logged jobs and completed repairs in response. The resident logged a complaint on 30 August 2022, that the issue had persisted since the property was built. Attempts to rectify it were not working and he was concerned the cost of repairs was being passed on to leaseholders. He said one of the reasons he bought the property was because of the security doors limiting access to his floor; but those doors had not been fixed despite numerous logged repairs and engineer visits.
  3. In its stage 1 acknowledgement of 15 September 2022, the landlord said it had raised the repair with a specialist contractor who would contact the resident directly. It would monitor the complaint and the repair, and contact him with updates, until the issue was resolved. It apologised for the delay and inconvenience. The resident chased the landlord for updates on the repairs throughout September and October 2022, and contacted us in December 2022 for assistance with his complaint.
  4. In the landlord’s stage 1 response of 29 December 2022, it apologised for the delayed repairs. It said a specialist contractor had attended and recommended the door be repaired or replaced but had failed to check the fob system, so a follow up visit had to be booked. It advised of a delay due to the holiday period and promised to update the resident once the engineer had visited. It said feedback had been provided to all parties to ensure improved service in the future. As the resident had asked to escalate his complaint to stage 2, he would be contacted within 8 weeks (but did not explain the reason for this timeframe).
  5. On 14 April 2023, the landlord emailed the resident saying its stage 2 response was attached (no copy provided to us). The landlord said it expected to complete the fault investigation in the next 4 weeks. It apologised for the delay and gave the specialist nature of the works and the 2-person visit requirement as the cause. It said that, while the complaint investigation was complete, it would keep it open until the issue was resolved. It promised to provide updates on the repair schedule and completion.
  6. The landlord issued a second stage 2 response on 16 June 2023, setting out a timeline of events since its ‘decision’ letter of 14 April 2023. It gave a target completion date of 10 July 2023 and said the nature of the fault had needed a trial-and-error approach which caused the delay in resolution and significant inconvenience to the resident and his family.
  7. The landlord identified the following failings in the service provided:
    1. It had responded to each report and carried out immediate work to damaged parts but had not explored or identified the underlying problem for the recurring issue.
    2. Its staff had not recorded reports in sufficient detail so valuable detail and wider context of the recurring fault were lost.
    3. The resident made significant effort to communicate with it and its contractor, including providing video evidence, which should have alerted it to the fact the responsive repairs were not addressing the underlying issue.
    4. Its repair policy stipulated a 14-day turnaround but allowed additional time for specialist repairs, requiring clear action plans and communication with the resident. The length of time taken for it to understand the fault and resolve it, and the failure to put an action plan in place, meant it had not met its expected level of service.
    5. There were avoidable delays in the assessment and approval of work following receipt of a quote on 31 May 2023.
  8. The landlord said it had given feedback to senior members of staff to ensure lessons were learnt and offered £400 compensation (£75 for poor communication, £75 for service failings (including complaint handling), £75 for time and effort, £75 for the disruption caused, and £100 as an apology). In his referral to us in September 2023, the resident said he was unhappy with the length of time taken for the repairs and the level of compensation offered.

Assessment and findings

Scope of investigation

  1. The resident logged a complaint with the landlord about issues with another communal door and received a stage 2 response on 9 January 2024. While we were initially copied into this correspondence, the resident has not expressly referred this complaint to us for investigation. As a result, it is not addressed within this report.
  2. The repair to the communal door which is the subject of this investigation was marked as complete on 4 August 2023. This investigation is focused on the events up to that date. If the resident has concerns about the landlord’s later handling of ongoing issues with this door, these need to be raised as a new complaint in the first instance. The Ombudsman can only consider issues which have exhausted the landlord’s complaint process.
  3. The resident has also said the communal door has been faulty since 2018. A complaint should be brought to the landlord’s attention within a reasonable period of the matter arising (which at the time of this complaint was 6 months). Therefore, this report has not made a finding on events prior to the resident’s report of 4 February 2022. However, the history of the issue is considered for context in the assessment where relevant.

Repairs to communal door

  1. The landlord has accepted its poor service levels in its complaint responses. Therefore, the question for us is whether those failings amount to maladministration and, if so, whether appropriate redress was offered to put things right.
  2. The resident’s lease says the landlord is responsible for the maintenance and repair of the common parts, which includes the door entry system. The landlord’s neighbourhood and housing management policy says that, alongside what residents report, it will undertake inspections, with colleagues taking ownership of issues and actions assigned to them in a timely and appropriate manner. Its responsive repairs policy says it will complete repairs within pre-defined timescales (the document provided to this Service does not set out those timeframes, but this was confirmed in the landlord’s response of 16 June 2023 as 14 days), and where these are not completed within timescales it will offer compensation.
  3. There were avoidable delays and mistakes in the landlord’s handling of the communal door repairs. In addition to the resident’s reports of the fault, the landlord’s fire safety checks repeatedly highlighted an issue with the door entry system. The checklists noted this was flagged for action but then the next check made identical observations about the fault. So, while the landlord was undertaking inspections in line with its policy, there is no evidence that appropriate or timely action was taken about the highlighted issues.
  4. Internal communications commented there was only one resident complaining about the issue. However, in addition to the landlord’s own inspection reports, other residents had reported the problem and were copied into communication between the landlord and the resident. The landlord was advised in March 2023 by its contractor of an additional job on their system for a similar issue on a different floor; something the email recipient did not seem to be aware of. This all shows a lack of cohesion and information sharing between the landlord’s departments, which no doubt added to the confusion and delays.
  5. The resident was told in the stage 1 acknowledgement that he would be kept updated, but this did not happen. The resident contacted us on 10 February 2023 and said he had just spoken with the landlord who told him his report was not even on its pending list of repairs. He had raised it again but feared he was going round in circles despite his detailed accounts of the issue and video recordings. Internal communication between the landlord and its contractor shows that the job was cancelled because the contractor was told by the landlord there were no reports made by residents unable to use their fobs.
  6. An internal email exchange between the landlord’s staff on 28 March 2023 highlights that no proactive or substantial action was taken after the stage 1 response. It was stated that nothing had been actioned since escalating the complaint to stage 2 as the ‘surveyor did not seem to think the landlord could do anything about it’ and it ‘had been going round in circles with this one.’ So, for a period of 3 months there was no significant progress made on the repair, the booked job was cancelled, and no updates were provided to the resident; leaving him to repeatedly chase the landlord.
  7. Even when the stage 2 response specified a completion date for the repairs, this was not met, nor an explanation provided for the delay. Yet again, no updates were provided to the resident, and he was left repeatedly chasing the landlord without any substantive responses. While the repair may have been complex, there were unnecessary and avoidable delays caused by the landlord coupled with a failure to communicate effectively with the resident.
  8. The landlord took some steps after the complaint was logged to redress matters such as providing feedback internally, apologising for its failures, and offering compensation for: its poor communication; the delay in repairs; and the resident’s time, trouble, and inconvenience. It also explained that the cost of the repairs was not passed on to him. 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. However, the compensation has not gone far enough to recognise the length of time the situation lasted or the continued failures.
  9. The resident was proactive in reporting repairs, gathering evidence, and highlighting that there was a wider issue beyond the fixes in response to individual reports. Despite this the landlord failed to take a holistic view and approach to the situation. It repeatedly failed to meet its own timescales and advised deadlines, even after the stage 2 response. The volume and tone of the resident’s contact with the landlord keenly displayed the upset and inconvenience he was experiencing due to this prolonged situation.
  10. Even when potential solutions were identified the landlord’s mistakes caused delays in their implementation. Where it was uncertain what to do next, at the very least it should have updated the resident. Instead, he was left having to chase the landlord repeatedly and pleading for it to address the underlying issue instead of ad-hoc repairs that inevitably failed. He was candid about the impact the situation was having on him and his family, sharing that his wife and child had even been locked out.
  11. The identified failures amount to maladministration and the landlord is ordered to pay the resident £175, in addition to the £325 previously paid, for the stress, upset, and inconvenience caused by its failures. The total sum of £500 is in line with the Ombudsman’s remedies guidance for findings of maladministration where the landlord’s offer was not proportionate to the failings identified by our investigation.
  12. We encourage landlords to self-assess against our Spotlight reports following publication. In March 2019, we published a report 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.

Complaint handling

  1. The landlord’s complaint policy applicable at the time defined a complaint as an expression of dissatisfaction requiring its response about (amongst other things) the standard of service, actions or lack of action, and delays in meeting published timelines.
  2. The policy set out timeframes for responding to complaints; namely 10 working days at stage 1 and 20 working days at stage 2, with complaint acknowledgements sent within 5 working days at both stages. In exceptional cases, where additional time was required, the resident would be informed of this and advised of a new timescale, and for extensions beyond a further 10 working days, the extension would be agreed with the resident.
  3. None of the timeframes set out in the landlord’s complaint policy were met at either stage. Further, no explanation was provided for the delays to the resident (or us) and no extension in timescales was agreed with him. It is understandable that the landlord wanted to make meaningful progress on the repair or be able to offer a solution before closing the complaint, but this does not explain the delay in issuing its formal responses. Our Complaint Handling Code applicable at the time set out that a complaint response should not be delayed in order to address the underlying issue or to conduct repairs.
  4. Further, where the responses were delayed outside the stipulated timeframes, there is no evidence that extensions were agreed with the resident or that he was advised of revised timescales. The resident also had to seek our assistance to obtain responses from the landlord or progress his complaint; an additional inconvenience and expenditure of time and effort which should not have been necessary.
  5. The landlord’s poor handling of the complaint amounts to maladministration. It is, therefore, ordered to write to the resident with an apology for its failure and to pay him £125, in addition to the £75 previously paid, for the upset and inconvenience caused by its complaint handling failures. The total sum of £200 is in line with the level suggested for low level maladministration in our remedies guidance.
  6. On 8 February 2024, we 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 we have 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 with regard to the landlord’s compliance with the Code, and the contents of its policies and procedures in that regard.
  7. However, an order is made for the landlord to review its handling of the 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 by the landlord in its handling of the resident’s:
    1. Reports of repair to a communal door on his floor.
    2. Formal complaint.

Orders

  1. Within 4 weeks of this report, the landlord is ordered to provide evidence to the Ombudsman that it has:
    1. Paid directly to the resident (and not offset against any rent arrears) £300 compensation, in addition to the £400 already paid, as follows:
      1. £175 in recognition of the distress and inconvenience caused by its handling of the reports of repair to a communal door.
      2. £125 in recognition of the upset and inconvenience caused by its poor handling of the associated complaint.
    2. Reviewed the complaint handling failures highlighted in this investigation alongside the provisions of the Code.